An Airline's Mistake Was a Mom's Living Nightmare: "I Was Given Another Boy"

Maribel Martinez was waiting to greet her son at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport when JetBlue personnel brought her a little boy she had never seen before. Meanwhile, her real son, Andy, had been put on a flight to Boston's Logan Airport.

Maribel trusted the airline with sending her son from the Dominican Republic, where he got confused with another young boy also flying to the United States. Somehow, the two boys even ended up with each others' passports. After the initial shock, JetBlue connected Maribel with her son and located the other boy's mother.

In a press conference filmed by the Independent, Maribel retold the horrifying experience. In Spanish, she said, "When I went to pick up my son, my son was not there. I was given another boy." In an interview with New York Daily News, the mom also expressed thinking her son had been kidnapped, adding, "I thought I would never see him again."

Though JetBlue refunded the family for the flight and offered them a $2,100 credit, Maribel is taking legal action for the emotional distress the incident caused.