Mother presented with wrong child at JFK airport after JetBlue sends son to Boston

'I thought I would never see him again,' says Maribel Martinez, the boy's mother

A five-year-old boy was flown to the wrong city in an airline mix-up that left his mother “freaking out” as she thought he had been kidnapped.

Maribel Martinez said she was distraught when staff from American airline JetBlue presented her with another little boy at New York’s JFK airport.

“No, this is not my child,” she told them, according to the New York Daily News. “I was freaking out.”

Her son Andy, who was returning unaccompanied from a family visit in the Dominican Republic, landed nearly 200 miles away in the US city of Boston.

Ms Martinez said her son was wearing a wristband with his name on it – but the other child may have been carrying Andy's passport.

It took more than three hours for the airline to figure out what had happened and where Andy was, said Ms Martinez’s lawyer Sanford Rubenstein.

“I thought he was kidnapped,” said Martinez, who said she had not stopped crying since the incident on 17 August. “I thought I would never see him again.”

Maribel Martinez accompanied by her lawyer Sanford Rubenstein, left, and a translator at a news conference on Thursday (Associated Press)

The boy who was mistakenly flown to New York was safely returned to Boston, JetBlue said. The airline is reviewing how the mix-up occurred.

“Upon learning of the error, our teams in JFK and Boston immediately took steps to assist the children in reaching their correct destinations,” JetBlue said in a statement.

“While the children were always under the care and supervision of JetBlue crew members, we realize this situation was distressing for their families.”

Maribel Martinez with a photo of her 5-year-old son Andy at her lawyer's office in New York (Associated Press)

Ms Martinez flew to the Dominican Republic with her son on 28 July for a family holiday and returned home to New York a week later, leaving Andy with relatives.

When buying his return ticket, she paid a $100 (£75) fee for a JetBlue representative to escort him onto the plane.

The airline put Andy on a flight to JFK Airport on the same day as his arrival in Boston.

JetBlue refunded Ms Martinez $475 (£358) for Andy's return ticket and also gave the family $2,100 (£1,583) in credit.