- A mother said United Airlines crew members told her to remove her son’s ventilator during a flight.
- Melissa Sotomayor said the crew made the request repeatedly, even when she produced medical documents.
- “Do not fly United Airlines. They are very judgmental,” Sotomayor said in a TikTok post.
United Airlines said it apologized to a mother after she accused airline crew members of repeatedly asking her to remove her son’s ventilator before their flight took off.
Melissa Sotomayor recounted her experience on United Flight 1349 on March 8 in a nearly 10-minute video she posted on TikTok last week.
In her video, she said she traveled with her 21-month-old son from Tampa, Florida, to Newark, New Jersey.
“My son is medically complex. He is dependent upon a trach and ventilator. He has vision problems, and he has hearing problems. He also has a g tube,” Sotomayor said in her video.
Sotomayor said she had obtained the necessary documentation before her flight to Tampa “so that my son could safely fly and there would be no issues.”
Sotomayor said that before takeoff, she had several negative interactions with cabin crew, including a flight attendant she called “Nora.”
The crew members insisted that she remove her son’s ventilator, then escalated the matter to the plane’s captain when she refused, Sotomayor said.
“Flying home, several flight attendants and the captain tried to demand that I remove my son from his vent and portable oxygen concentrator until we reached a safe altitude. I told them all that those pieces of medical equipment are keeping my son alive,” Sotomayor wrote on a GoFundMe page she’s started to raise funds for lawyers’ fees.
In her video, Sotomayor said that her flight eventually took off an hour later.
“I was really upset by the way we were humiliated in front of others and the way we were talked to,” she continued, adding that she got “no apology” from crew members.
Sotomayor said in her video that she’d lodged a complaint with United.
“Do not fly United Airlines. They are very judgmental. They are unwilling to learn, and they treat you like you are less than them if you have a loved one with a disability,” Sotomayor said in her TikTok video.
A spokesperson for United Airlines told Business Insider on Sunday that they had contacted Sotomayor to “address her concerns” and “apologized for any frustrations she may have experienced.”
Sotomayor told NBC on Sunday that she thought United’s apology “was not sincere.”
United has also been hit with a separate, discrimination-related complaint.
On Wednesday, two Jewish United Airlines passengers filed a lawsuit against the airline. In the lawsuit, the passengers’ lawyers alleged that the pilot forcibly removed one of them from the bathroom and then made discriminatory remarks about their religion.
Sotomayor did not respond to a request for comment from BI.
