Imagine sitting on a tarmac for two hours and complaining about your baby getting sick because he started to overheat: That’s exactly what happened to a Colorado mother on a United Airlines flight on her way to Texas last week.
Emily France and her 4-month-old son, Owen, were on United Airlines Flight 4644 around 1:20 p.m. Thursday. She thought the flight would take off within 30 minutes, but those 30 minutes turned into two hours, and the mother and son sat on the plane as the temperature rose.
“There was just hot air coming from the vents,” France told the Denver Post. She continued, “We just sat and sat and sat. I hit my call button and said, ‘I think it’s getting dangerously hot back here.’”
France said that she told the flight crew her son was getting hotter by the minute. And although they offered her ice packs and allowed her to exit the plane for 20 minutes, she says things got worse once she was back on the plane.
“His whole body flashed red and his eyes rolled back in his head and he was screaming,” France told the paper regarding her son. “And then he went limp in my arms. It was the worst moment of my life.”
Eventually paramedics were called and the baby was treated at a hospital and released, NBC reports.
In a statement to NBC News, United Airlines issued an apology: “This should never have happened. We are profoundly sorry to our customer and her child for the experience they endured. We are actively looking into what happened to prevent this from occurring again.”
Read more at the Denver Post and NBC News.