Upon boarding the American Airlines plane from Charlotte NC to JFK,(flight 1972 6/29/17), we informed one of the flight attendants, that my son has severe nut allergies. We did clean the seat and the surrounding areas around the seat, and simply politely asked if they (like Jet Blue and Delta) ask passengers in the nearby rows to refrain from eating nut products. When we flew Delta, they even announced that it would be a nut free flight due to a severe allergy on board.
The flight attendant panicked and went running up to a another employee who came back to our row and in a very loud voice (just to single my son out more) read from the handbook which removed any responsibility from American Airlines to restrict nuts on board. I told them that i was pretty certain in the 1.5 hour flight that if passengers were told, they would refrain from eating such foods. I said it would be much more of an inconvenience to have to make an emergency landing due to an anaphylactic reaction. He and the other flight attendants completely ignored me and all the passengers around us were horrified. They all said they had no issue not eating nuts on the flight.
You may think their treatment of our family could not get much worse but it did. To our horror and to aggravate an already bad situation, one of the flight attendants offered trail mix to a passenger seated across from us. She had no second thoughts in telling him that it contained peanuts along with other ingredients. He did not take it, but I found this complete dismissal of our situation to be quite alarming, (and quite frankly it seemed purposely nasty). During the flight, the head flight attendant came to me in an extremely patronizing and almost sarcastic way to “see how we were doing”. Upon leaving the plane, I told them all they should be ashamed of themselves and although the steward hid his name tag, we told him that we would know who he was when this matter was taken higher up in American.
This situation is completely incomprehensible and I am shocked at the lack of concern that an airline has for the health of its passengers. While we will never fly American again, it makes it very scary for my teenager who will be traveling alone to be constantly worrying about his safety. We cannot always fly Delta or Jet Blue and I find it totally unacceptable that these circumstances occur. As I noted, this was June 29 at 4 pm, flight 1972 to JFK from Charlotte NC. There were 2 stewardesses and one steward on the flight.
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