United Airlines said it has apologized to a woman who felt “humiliated” when crew members tried to get her to remove her son’s ventilator on a flight this month.
Melissa Sotomayor said in a now-viral video that the flight crew on her March 8 trip from Tampa, Florida, to Newark, New Jersey, tried to make her detach her son from lifesaving medical equipment and store it so the plane could take off.
“This message is for United Airlines. The way that you treated my son when we were attempting to fly home from Tampa to Newark was absolutely ridiculous,” Sotomayor said in the nearly 10-minute TikTok video, which has more than 1 million views.
United said it has contacted Sotomayor “to address her concerns and apologized for any frustration she may have experienced.” The airline did not provide further details.
Sotomayor told NBC via text message Sunday that the airline’s apology “was not sincere.”
Sotomayor said her son, who is “medically complex,” depends on a ventilator and a tracheostomy tube. The 2-year-old was born premature, at 22 weeks’ gestation, she said.
Sotomayor said that before their flight, she obtained documentation so her son could fly to their destination. They did not encounter problems on the first leg — the trip to Tampa.
She also said that she shared the documentation with the airline before the trip and that the airline cleared her son’s medical equipment with no problem.
But they ran into issues on their return flight.
Sotomayor said a flight attendant informed her that she would need to put the medical equipment under the seat before takeoff.
Sotomayor said that she told the crew member that her son could not be off the machines because “they are keeping him alive” and that she provided her documentation — including medical clearance letters from two of her son’s doctors — to the flight attendant.
She was then approached by another flight attendant who told her that their seats might have to be moved if she didn’t comply, Sotomayor said.
She said she provided the documentation again and told the attendants that the airline’s accessibility department selected her seats before the trip.
Sotomayor told NBC News that when the airline contacted her to apologize, the representative said the flight attendants reported it was a “bulk head seating problem,” even though, she said, they never mentioned that in the moment.
“They said it was because I was refusing to remove my son from his ventilator and portable oxygen concentrator until takeoff,” Sotomayor said.
In her video, Sotomayor said a third flight attendant told her to remove the equipment and said her son would “be OK until we’re in the air at a high enough altitude.” Sotomayor refused to remove the devices.
A passenger sitting nearby intervened, Sotomayor said, and apologized for the way she was being treated.
The flight’s captain got involved, she said.
“He then says that I am being difficult and my son’s medical equipment is a danger to other passengers and to my son, and that I am not following FAA guidelines,” Sotomayor said.
She said she told the captain that all the medical equipment was approved by the Federal Aviation Administration and showed her documents.
The captain told Sotomayor that it was “dangerous” for her son to fly, and she once again said that he had been medically cleared, she said.
The flight departed more than an hour later, she said.
“I was really upset by the way we were humiliated in front of others in the way we were talked to,” Sotomayor said in the video. “The captain talked to me as if I was purposely endangering my son, and they were unwilling to listen to the fact that my son was dependent on this equipment to keep him alive.”
Sotomayor said she then contacted United.
“I have felt so disrespected by these airlines, well, United Airlines,” she said in her video, “and I will never fly United again.”
