Melissa Sotomayor said in a now-viral video she was humiliated by the way she was spoken to. The airline said it had apologized to her.

Summary

United Airlines apologized to Melissa Sotomayor after crew members tried to make her remove her son’s ventilator during a March 8 flight from Tampa to Newark.

Sotomayor, whose 2-year-old son relies on a ventilator and tracheostomy tube, said staff demanded the equipment be stowed for takeoff despite prior medical clearance.

A third flight attendant claimed the child would “be OK” without it. The captain called her “difficult” and said the equipment was a safety risk.

Sotomayor expressed feeling humiliated and vowed never to fly United again.

  • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
    62·
    4 days ago

    I haven’t had the need to use pre-boarding before, but usually I see flight attendants pretty busy with tasks as passengers are boarding.

    I think we both agree the original screw up is the United Reservation folks that approved these passengers for seats they couldn’t be eligible for because of the needed equipment. Its also possible that United Reservation folks may not have marked the paperwork that the equipment was required for the kid to live. So the flight crew may have thought the mom was trying to leverage the situation to get behavior she didn’t need. I still maintain the mom did all the prep work properly and this was a fault on United.

    • Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works
      9·
      4 days ago

      I’ve used pre-boarding a lot, because my husband is quadriplegic, and especially when we also had two small children. There was always at least an offer of assistance from the crew, although I did the lifting and transferring and wheelchair-stowing myself. But it’s been a lot of years since we’ve flown at all, because planes have become even more inaccessible. They’re exempt from the ADA so it’s hard to change anything.