Thursday, 4:30 PM
Father sues airline for letting his daughter fly south
By Shelley Murphy
In the midst of a divorce case last March, the mother of 2-year-old Chloe Combe-Rivas secretly boarded a Continental Airlines flight in Kansas City with her daughter, caught a connecting flight from Houston to Mexico, and never returned.
Monday, the young girl’s distraught father, Didier Combe, 40, filed a federal lawsuit in Boston against Continental Airlines, accusing the carrier of negligence, breach of contract, and interference with custodial relations. The suit says Continental ignored its own regulations, which require a single parent traveling from the United States to Mexico with a minor child to provide a notarized letter from the other parent authorizing the trip.
"I just feel that they didn’t protect my child the way it was supposed to be done," said Combe, who has made six trips to Mexico in a vain search for the brown-eyed, curly-haired daughter he hasn’t seen since his former wife failed to return her from a visit. "I know that I have to try everything to get her back."
A spokeswoman for Continental Airlines, Julie King, said the company has not yet received a copy of the lawsuit and declined to comment.
Combe, a French native who came to the United States on a tennis scholarship in 1991 and became a citizen two years ago, said he and his former wife, Aline Rivas-Vera, were living in Kansas City, going through a divorce, and sharing 50-50 custody of their daughter when she fled last year. He recently moved to Ipswich.
"I brought Chloe to her Mom’s for the day on March 14," said Combe. He said he later learned that Rivas-Vera, 27, who is a Mexican citizen, had boarded Continental Flight 2547 from Kansas City to Houston with their daughter, then caught Continental Flight 1524 to Mexico City.
A Missouri court granted Combe full custody of his daughter last year, and in June, his former wife was indicted by a federal grand jury in Missouri on an international parental kidnapping charge.
Lawyer Anthony Tarricone of Boston, who represents Combe, accused Continental Airlines of failing to protect Chloe Combe-Rivas and violating regulations that were specifically designed to prevent parental kidnapping.
