‘Flight attendant lied’
Teary Queens girl relives dog jet-death nightmare
A Queens girl whose dog died on a United flight said the flight attendant who forced her mom to put their pet carrier into an overhead compartment later claimed she had no idea their pooch was in it — but the family isn’t buying it.
“The flight attendant came, and she was like, ‘You have to put him up there because it’s going to block the path,’ ” Sophia Ceballos, 11, told ABC News on behalf of her mother, Catalina Robledo, who isn’t fluent in English.
“And we were like, ‘It’s a dog! It’s a dog!’ And she said, ‘It doesn’t matter, you still have to put it up there,’ ” the distraught girl said about the family’s 10-month-old French bulldog, Kokito.
Robledo, Sophia and her baby brother were flying from Houston to La Guardia on Monday along with their pup, who was in a TSA-approved pet carrier.
The carrier was partially blocking an aisle before the three-hour flight, so the flight attendant told Robledo to move it into the tight overhead confines.
Robledo asked if she could carry Kokito in her lap, but the flight attendant refused, Sophia told ABC News.
Fellow passenger Maggie Gremminger told WNBC that “it didn’t feel right” to place the carrier in the bin.
“[Another passenger and I] looked at each other and said, ‘Did they just put the dog up there?’ ” said Gremminger, who even Googled whether animals could fly safely in overhead compartments.
Sophia said she heard Kokito let out a few whimpering barks during the flight. “We were really worried,” she said. “He barked in the middle of the flight, and there was a lot of turbulence, so we couldn’t get him.”
When Robledo opened the bin after landing, she saw Kokito wasn’t moving and burst into tears.
“She took him out, and he was dead,” the sobbing girl said. “She’s like, ‘ He died — died!’ And he didn’t wake up . . . She hit his chest so he could breathe, but he wouldn’t move.”
Sophia rejects the attendant’s claim of not knowing a dog was in the carrier.
“She actually touched the bag and felt him there,” she said.
“We told her it was a dog. She was lying!”
The airline called it a “tragic accident that should never have occurred.”
United spokesman Charles Hobart said the airline is investigating the incident and talking to the attendant, whom he declined to identify.