OldAg84

First, if you are closing a million dollar sale (I'm a salesman myself) and you COULDN'T manage you're time/travel options/schedule well enough- don't worry your competition will be there. I just hope it's me.

When I travel (whether by air, car, or rail) I leave myself extra time and options where I can. Things break, weather happens, accidents/incidents occur. That's almost a given-

Control what you can control and let the rest go.....

EVERYONE on the A/C didn't lose a loved one. When there is a medical emergency on any flight I've been on- I

1. thank god it's not me
2. say a quiet prayer for the person (Catholic upbringing I guess)
3. sit back and hope for best for the person.
and
4. hope I'm not too delayed.

The alternative is to say "the heck with them, what about me". Bad karma in any case.

Finally, if you hire an attorney in a damages suit; you want to hire a "shark". That's the whole point. I'll bet your opponents legal team are a bunch of patsys that are ready to roll over.

ewrbasedpilot

I understand where you're coming from. It seems that to take a bad situation and make it worse isn't the answer either. A person passed away on the flight..............that's sad, but now we inconvenience everyone else and leave the body 1000 miles from their destination for the grieving family to have to worry about......how smart is that? I've done the "divert" thing for sick passengers and you know what? You end up with a whole lotta grief. Our passenger was an 85 year old man with hear problems, traveling with his 78 year old wife. We were flying from EWR to TPA a couple of days before XMAS. This gentleman started having all kinds of "irregular heartbeat" problems and medlink told us to divert. We did. The paramedics checked the individual out, pronounced him "fit to continue flying" and told us to continue. The captain and I decided taking him back up where we started from wasn't the answer so he told the man and his wife that they would have to stay unless a DOCTOR could prove they were fit to travel again. When we finally got to TPA, we were 4 hours late and a lot of ****ed off passengers deplaned. On a sidenote, the captain was reprimanded for not allowing the man and his wife back on....................... So.....we divert due to illness, don't let the people back on for fear of having the same problem when we level off, and then we get in trouble for it. I guess their is no right answer. But as I said before, stopping in and dropping a deceased passenger off in the middle of nowhere isn't the answer either. Also, try telling people going on a cruise they'll be missing it and see what happens. We all don't have the luxury of "extra time" to give ourselves that much travel leeway. I am not a coldhearted person as some may think, but if your family member is traveling with me and dies enroute, would you be happy with me leaving them 1000 miles away for YOU to take care of? I don't think so.

ewrbasedpilot

Yep, so let's add to the family's grief and let them decide how to get the body the last 1000 miles. Surely they won't have enough to deal with in their time of sorrow.

OldAg84

In this thread I haven't said I agreed or disagreed with the continuation of the flight- I'm sure that's a hard call.

I did say I would find it a little disconcerting to have a corpse traveling with me in first class. But again, somebody else has bigger problems at that moment.

Like I said previously, "darned if you do, darned if you don't".

ewrbasedpilot

Yeah, it is disconcerting to have a body traveling with you in first class, but unfortunately, unlike the 1011, there aren't any elevators to move them around. So, where do you put the body? I don't know.....maybe the lav and lock it shut as mentioned in a previous response, but someones gonna get suspicious when they've been standing there an hour to use it. Tough call and one I hope I never have to make. I guess the best thing to do would be to ask their attorney. I'm sure he/she will have ALL the answers after contemplating about the situation for a few weeks.

Freightpuppy

No doubt. The family won't care what it costs the rest of the public (big picture here people) when they are awarded ridiculous amounts of money and are driving around in a $200K car either.

Freightpuppy

There's your first problem.......tee hee kidding with ya!

jrNWACA

My husband flies for NWA, but I had to chime in after working in emergency medicine for 20plus years & teaching life support and use of EADs for several:
O2 will not help a person with a diabetic emergency, it won't even help someone with severe heart disease who is going to code with a few minutes. Most people are going to die no matter what you do.
Once someone stops breathing, the O2 has to be forced in and I don't think the mask/cannula on the plane provides for this. It is easy to go through 2-3-4 tanks of O2 working on a patient if you do use it at a high liter flow. Also, a EAD will only "shock" a heart that has some electric current (no or really non existent heart beats will not trigger it). It will tell you to continue CPR. MDs have the option of using defib when they want in the hospital setting, but with an EAD the machine makes the decision. But, you can use meds to stimulate the heart in a hospital. This is what makes the difference in most cases. Bottom line, the FA not giving her O2 at first would have made a difference. The family may sue for emotional distress, but I would be shocked if they could prove damages (causing her death). If the O2 tanks were empty, there were several more. Anyone know about those? Again, once she stopped breathing they were of no value without the right equipment. If equipment was not working, yes that needs to be addressed.
Sorry for such a long reply, it just bugs me that the media wants to make it seem that the airline caused her death. She could have arrested in the middle of the hospital and the result most likely would have been the same.

StripAlert

I'd say damn near 100% of us, in fact.

ClipperJet

You could never answer why you didn't land and get the person to a hospital/medical treatment.

Even if a doctor said the person was dead.

Maybe the doctor is wrong, you can't be sure. Land. I see this as a no-brainer, even if you have to inconvenience a thousand people.