Airline sued for mixing up two kids and flying them to the wrong cities

A MUM is suing an airline for mixing up her five-year-old son with another boy and flying him to the wrong city.

A MUM is suing JetBlue Airways for confusing her son with another kid and sending him to the wrong city.

Maribel Martinez went to New York City’s John F Kennedy Airport on August 17 to meet her son who was arriving on a flight — but she was presented with another boy instead.

Both unaccompanied boys had flown out of Cibao International Airport in the Dominican Republic — but Ms Martinez’s son, Andy, had been put on a flight to Boston instead of New York City, while the other boy had been put on the flight to New York City instead of Boston.

Martinez said her son was wearing a wristband with his name on it, but the other child was carrying Andy’s passport.

Maribel Martinez, with her lawyer Sanford Rubenstein (left) and her husband Raphael Martinez (right), has spoken about the trauma she experienced due to the mix-up. Picture: Bebeto Matthews / AP

In a lawsuit filed on Friday, Ms Martizez said the mix-up had caused her “great emotional distress, extreme fear, horror, mental shock, mental anguish and psychological trauma”.

According to the court documents, JetBlue staff at Boston’s Logan Airport escorted Andy to a woman he had never seen before and told him he was being reunited with his mother.

It allegedly took three hours for JetBlue to sort out what had happened and put the mother and son on the phone with each other.

Soon after the incident, Ms Martinez, of New York, recalled how she immediately feared the worst when presented with the wrong child.

“I thought he [Andy] was kidnapped. I thought I would never see him again,” she said.

The mother had paid an extra AU$130 to have her son cared for by JetBlue workers while on the flight and said she was “freaking out” after losing her son.

JetBlue said it wouldn’t comment on pending litigation. Picture: John Murphy

“I was freaking out. I didn’t know if he was alive. I still haven’t stopped crying,” she said last month.

She said when he eventually got on the phone with Andy in Boston, he said: “Mami, they put me on another plane.”

Both children were eventually returned to their intended destinations.

The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages. Ms Martinez’s lawyer Sanford Rubenstein said she also hopes to shine a light on JetBlue’s practices to prevent such a mix-up from happening again.

A spokesman for JetBlue Airways Corporation told Associated Press it didn’t comment on pending litigation.

After the incident, JetBlue refunded the mother AU$617 for the flight, and AU$2700 in credit for future flights.