Flight attendants onboard a JetBlue flight to the Bahamas allegedly refused to provide First Aid to a passenger who got her foot entangled seatbelt that was hanging down into the aisle, sending her tumbling to the floor and fracturing her ankle in the process.
Maria Mistretta of Suffolk, New York State, is now suing the airline following the July 23, 2022, incident, which also left her with deep vein thrombosis – a potentially lethal condition that occurs when a blood clot forms in a deep vein which is typically in the leg.
Late last month, Maria and her husband Salvatore Mistretta filed the lawsuit against JetBlue in a Queens, New York, court demanding compensation from JetBlue under the Montreal Convention which allows injured passengers to claim damages up to the equivalent of $170,000.
The Mistrettas claim that during the flight from New York to the Bahamas, Maria got up from her seat and stepped into the aisle, but as she went to take her next step, her foot became entangled in a seatbelt that was dangling down into the aisle.
Maria was dragged backwards and sent her tumbling to the floor. As she fell to the floor, she heard her ankle crack as it twisted in the seatbelt.
An off-duty nurse who just happened to be a passenger on the flight rushed to Maria’s aid to check that she wasn’t suffering from concussion while her husband and another good samaritan passenger worked to free her foot and get her back in her seat.
At this point, the Mistretta’s asked the flight attendants for a First Aid kit and some ice to apply to her swelling ankle, but the crew allegedly refused to assist because everything had already been packed away in preparation for the plane’s arrival in the Bahamas.
On arrival, the Mistretta’s were then made to wait for all the other passengers to disembark, and a wheelchair brought to assist Maria was allegedly broken.
JetBlue representatives in the Bahamas then allegedly recommended against calling an ambulance to get the Mistrettas to a nearby hospital and instead advised them to return straight away to New York to get help in the United States.
In order to do so, court documents allege that the Mistrettas were forced to book a return flight the same day and left to their own devices to get through immigration and customs and navigate the airport while Maria sat in the same broken wheelchair.
Once they were finally onboard their return flight, the Mistrettas once again requested ice and a First Aid kit from the flight attendants. Bizarrely, the crew again refused this request because doing so would require writing an incident report and as the accident didn’t happen on their flight, they wouldn’t write up a report.
Once they finally got back to New York late the same day, they went to the emergency room where Maria was found to have a fractured ankle, along with DVT and a bad back which had been aggravated from an old injury.
Under Article 17 of the Montreal Convention, airlines liable for injuries sustained by passengers during the course of an international flight, including boarding and deplaning.
Airlines have few defences in the case of a claim under the Montreal Convention, although they can avoid liability if they prove the accident was the result of the passenger’s own negligence. In some cases, they can also pin the blame on another passenger.
In addition to their claim under the Montreal Convention, the Mistrettas are suing JetBlue for inflicting emotional distress.
Matt’s take
There are some pretty serious allegations in this lawsuit and it will be interesting to see how JetBlue responds to the allegations that its flight crew failed to provide First Aid to Maria Mistretta.
On the face of it, there is no reason why First Aid couldn’t have been provided, and the excuse that these items were packed away in preparation for landing seems pretty unjustifiable.
As for the main cause of the claim that JetBlue is liable for a dangling seatbelt, it will certainly be worth watching how a court deals with this – if, of course, this lawsuit even gets that far.
In most cases, airlines are able to settle these cases out of court which makes case law pretty hard to come by.
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Mateusz Maszczynski honed his skills as an international flight attendant at the most prominent airline in the Middle East and has been flying throughout the COVID-19 pandemic for a well-known European airline. Matt is passionate about the aviation industry and has become an expert in passenger experience and human-centric stories. Always keeping an ear close to the ground, Matt's industry insights, analysis and news coverage is frequently relied upon by some of the biggest names in journalism.
