A woman has filed a lawsuit against JetBlue Airways for mixing up her five-year-old son with another boy and flying him to the wrong city.

Maribel Martinez said in the lawsuit that she suffered "great emotional distress, extreme fear, horror, mental shock, mental anguish and psychological trauma" when she went to meet her son's flight on August 17 at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, and he was not on it.

The little boy, Andy Martinez, had been mistakenly put on a flight to Boston's Logan Airport instead of the flight to Kennedy.

According to the court papers, JetBlue staff at Logan escorted Andy to a woman he had never seen before, and told him he was being reunited with his mother.

Meanwhile, a boy who was supposed to be on the flight to Boston had been put on Andy's New York-bound flight and was presented to Martinez.

It took three hours for JetBlue to sort out what had happened and put the mother and son on the phone to each other, the lawsuit charges.

Both boys had flown out of Cibao International Airport in the Dominican Republic. The boy who was flown to New York instead of Boston has not been publicly identified.

The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages. Ms Martinez's lawyer, Sanford Rubenstein, said she also hopes to shine a light on JetBlue's practices and prevent such a mix-up from happening again.

JetBlue Airways, which is based in New York, does not comment on pending litigation, a spokesman said.