Coby and Emily Stewart have sued American Airlines after their 4-year-old son, Archer, was involuntarily bumped from a flight the family had booked for a Disney World trip. The Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana, parents say they paid $5,187.58 for six round-trip tickets from Lake Charles Regional Airport to Orlando, Florida, on Jan. 2, 2025, and arrived nearly two hours early.
They say they checked in immediately, bought preferred seats for everyone and were told at the airport that the flight was oversold. Coby Stewart identified himself as former U.S. military and told a ticket agent that his wife was deaf and that he served as her sign language interpreter, according to the complaint.
The lawsuit, initially filed in state court on Feb. 27 and moved to federal court on March 10, centers on what the family says happened after the airline denied their youngest child a seat. Attorney Chris Ieyoub said Stewart was promised a $1,200 voucher for his troubles, but the complaint says that offer later disappeared when he was told the original flight had not actually been sold out.
That reversal matters because federal rules set compensation for denied boarding. The U.S. Department of Transportation says bumped passengers delayed for one to two hours are entitled to double the one-way fare, up to $1,075, while delays longer than two hours can trigger payment of four times the one-way value, capped at $2,150. The family says the promised voucher fell short of those amounts and came after they had already paid for a trip they describe as a once-in-a-lifetime journey.
The case also lands in a wider debate over how airlines handle oversold flights, especially when children are involved. The Independent says American is reportedly the airline that involuntarily bumps the largest number of ticketed passengers, a detail that gives the Stewart complaint broader resonance than a single family dispute.
American Airlines did not respond to requests for comment. The question now is not whether the Stewarts were upset, but whether the airline’s handling of the bump and the later voucher offer will survive in federal court.