United Airlines said he apologized to a mother who felt “humiliated” when crew members tried to eliminate the fan of his son at a flight earlier this month.
Melissa Sotomayor said in a video viral that the flight crew on his journey on March 8 from Tampa, Florida, to Newark, New Jersey, tried to make his son separate from medical equipment that save lives and keep it so that the plane could take off.
“This message is for United Airlines. The way you treated my son when we tried to fly to Tampa’s house to Newark was absolutely ridiculous,” Sotomayor said in the Tiktok video of almost 10 minutes, which has more than 1 million views.
United said he has contacted Sotomayor “to address his concerns and apologized for any frustration he may have experienced.” The airline did not provide more details.
Sotomayor told NBC through the text message on Sunday that the apology of the airline “was not sincere.”
Sotomayor said his son, who is “medically complex”, depends on a fan and a tracheotomy tube. The 2 -year -old was born premature, at 22 weeks gestation, he said.
Sotomayor said that before his flight, he obtained documentation so that his son could fly to his destination. They did not find problems in the first leg: the trip to Tampa.
He also said he shared the documentation with the airline before the trip and that the airline cleared his son’s medical team without any problem.
But they encountered problems on their return flight.
Sotomayor said a hostess informed him that he would need to put the medical team under the seat before taking off.
The mother said she told the crew member that her son could not be out of the machines because “they keep him alive” and that he provided his documentation, including the medical authorization letter of two of his son’s doctors, to the hostess.
Then another hostess approached him that told him that his seats may have to be transferred if he did not meet, said Sotomayor.
She said she provided the documentation again and told the attendees that her seats had been selected by the airline accessibility department before the trip.
Sotomayor told NBC News that when the airline contacted her to apologize, the representative said the hostesses reported that it was a “bulk seat problem,” although, he said, they never mentioned it at the time.
“They said it was because I was denying my son from his fan and portable oxygen concentrator until takeoff,” Sotomayor said.
In his video, Sotomayor said that a third hostess told him to remove the team and that his son “would be fine until we are in the air to an altitude high enough.” The mother refused to eliminate devices.
A passenger sitting close intervened, Sotomayor said, and apologized for the way he was being treated.
The captain of the flight got involved, he said.
“Then he says that I am difficult and that my son’s medical team is a danger to other passengers and my son, and that I am not following the guidelines of the FAA,” said Sotomayor.
She said she told the captain that all medical teams were approved by FAA and showed her documents.
The captain told Sotomayor that it was “dangerous” for her son to fly and she once again said she had been medically cleaned, the mother said.
The flight left more than an hour later, he said.
“I was really upset by the way we were humiliated in front of others in the way they talked to us,” Sotomayor said in the video. “The captain spoke to me as if I was endangering my son on purpose, and they were not willing to listen to the fact that my son depended on this team to keep him alive.”
Sotomayor said he later contacted United.
“I have felt so disrespected by these airlines, well, United Airlines,” he said in his video, “and I will never fly together again.”
