It’s more like Jet Black and Blue.
A seatbelt snafu aboard a JetBlue airliner left a Long Island woman with a broken ankle, deep vein issues and shattered dreams of a trip from John F. Kennedy International Airport to the Bahamas with her husband, she said in a federal lawsuit.
The ugly air saga unfolded around 8:15 a.m. on July 23, 2022 when Maria Mistretta, 59, got up from her second row seat and stepped into the aisle, where her foot became entangled in a low hanging seatbelt — flipping her onto her back, she said in Brooklyn court papers filed July 31.
A nurse who happened to be seated nearby, checked Mistretta for a concussion while another passenger helped her husband Salvatore free his wife’s foot from the belt and “assist her off the floor and back to her seat,” according to court papers.
The Mistrettas implored the flight crew for a first aid kit and ice, but were told “everything was packed up and inaccessible for the remainder of the [non-stop, three-hour] flight,” they said in the litigation.
The crew also made the injured passenger wait for everyone else to deplane once they landed in the Bahamas, then provided a broken wheelchair that “lacked the proper support for her injured leg,” she said in the filing.
Once in the Bahamas, the Mistrettas claim JetBlue personnel recommended against calling for an ambulance to a nearby hospital and advised the couple to return to New York for medical evaluation.
To add insult to injury, the couple needed to book a return flight, proceed through customs and security “without assistance, all in the same broken wheelchair that prohibited Maria Mistretta from properly elevating her leg,” they said in the lawsuit.
Upon the couple’s “late arrival” back to JFK, “they immediately” went to a local hospital emergency room where doctors determined Maria Mistretta suffered a fractured right ankle, deep vein thrombosis in the right leg and aggravation of a pre-existing back condition during Flight 121, they said.
The couple is demanding $170,000 in damages.
An attorney for the Mistrettas declined comment. JetBlue did not return messages.
