- Spirit Airlines apologized to a Puerto Rican family after refusing to let them fly, CBS News reported.
- The family was traveling to the US territory from LA, and their toddler did not have a passport.
A Puerto Rican family traveling from Los Angeles to Puerto Rico was stopped from boarding a Spirit Airlines flight because the parents' child did not have a US passport. An American passport, however, is not required to travel between the US territory and the US mainland.
Late last month at Los Angeles International Airport, Marivi Roman Torres, her husband, and their two-year-old son reached the Spirit Airlines ticket counter after planning to visit family on the island, they were told they needed to show their passports.
Roman Torres said the agent told her that was an international flight. "I told her, 'No, Puerto Rico is not another country. It is a US territory,'" she told CBS News.
While she and her husband showed their passports anyway, they told the Spirit agent their toddler did not have one after she asked to see it.
The employee then offered to either refund the flight or reschedule for when the family could acquire a passport for the young child.
Roman Torres asked, "Is there anyone else I can talk to? Can we call customer service together?"
Calling the Spirit staff "completely inflexible," the family subsequently bought JetBlue tickets at a higher price. A JetBlue airline employee told the family passports were not needed to travel to the island in the Caribbean, "I'm like, 'I know!'" Roman Torres told CBS.
After the incident, the airline said in a statement that they "sincerely apologized" for the inconvenience after CBS News contacted Spirit. The airline added they had refunded their tickets and provided travel vouchers for future flights.
"Spirit has a long history of serving Puerto Rico. In this specific case, an agent at LAX who is new to the position misunderstood the identification requirements. We are providing the agent with additional coaching and reiterating proper procedure," the statement said.
Even so, Roman Torres said she would no longer book with the airline "My trust was broken there on something that should not have happened."
US citizens can travel to several US territories without a passport
In a video news report posted on Twitter by CBS national correspondent David Begnaud — which has been viewed more than 800,000 times as of Friday — social media users heaped criticisms on the budget airline.
"How does the airline agent and the supervisor not know that you don't need a passport to travel to Puerto Rico? You learn that Puerto Rico is a commonwealth of the U.S.A. in the 3rd Grade," one Twitter user wrote.
—David Begnaud (@DavidBegnaud) May 18, 2023
Those born in Puerto Rico are US citizens, although Puerto Ricans cannot vote in US presidential elections. Rights groups have urged for more equal protections for residents of Puerto Rico under the US Constitution.
US citizens can travel to several US territories beyond the 50 states without a passport, including the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands, according to the US government.