A 44-year-old Brooklyn woman was returning from vacation in Haiti when she began to have trouble breathing. According to her cousin who was on the flight with her, she was refused help twice by the flight attendant, then she was brought two oxygen tanks with masks—but both were empty. Her cousin requested an emergency landing, but before they could touch down in Miami she was dead, so the plane continued to JFK. The airline isn’t commenting on why the emergency tanks were empty in the first place. “After the flight attendant refused to administer oxygen to Ms. Desir, she became distressed, pleading, ‘Don’t let me die,’ Mr. Oliver recalled.”
He said other passengers aboard Flight 896 became agitated over the situation, and the flight attendant, apparently after phone consultation with the cockpit, tried to administer oxygen from a portable tank and mask, but the tank was empty.
Mr. Oliver said two doctors and two nurses who were aboard tried to administer oxygen from a second tank, which was also empty.
Sonja Whitemon, a spokeswoman for American Airlines, would not comment on Mr. Oliver’s claims of faulty medical equipment aboard the plane.
Ms. Desir was placed on the floor and a nurse tried to resuscitate her, but to no avail, Mr. Oliver said. “I cannot believe what is happening on the plane,” he said, sobbing. “She cannot get up, and nothing on the plane works.”
Thus continues American Airlines’ zero-tolerance rule to illness and health emergencies, and their devotion to creating unsafe environments for employees and passengers.
(Thanks to everyone who sent this in!)
“Woman, 44, Dies on Plane With 2 Empty Oxygen Tanks “ [New York Times]
(Airplane photo: Adrian Pingstone)
UPDATE: American Airlines disputes this story.
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@CaliforniaCajun:
The thing is : They had the emergency equipment on board, it didnt work. Thats the point. Everything else doesnt really matter.
I am working at a museum, and we have to have emergency equipment on site in every floor of the museum, and this stuff has to be checked every 6 months. If it isnt and someone checks it and finds out it hasnt been checked in 6 months we can shut the place down until we get it replaced. (its a public building so the rules are rather strict about that).
So why doesnt an airline manage to have a minimum of working emergency equipment on their planes.
If she died anyways … ok thats life … bad luck not your day. It happens … people die in their beds, they die on trains, they die on the wheel of their car. They also die on planes. No biggie.
But diying in a basically dangerouse enviroment (Aluminum Tube, 10 km above sea level, oxygen the same as on a 3000 high mountain) just cause the equipment that it meant to safe lives is not working is just wrong.
@Mina_da_mad_child: Apparently your reading comprehension is not all that good.
Boston Herald Story. Oxygen was available and the defibrillator couldn’t find a pulse. Apparently, the woman’s traveling companion instructed the crew to give her oxygen when the woman went into diabetic shock – not even close to the right thing to do.
The MSNBC story also cited in the comments above says the same thing. Point is that none of the folks complaining about “corporate shills” here bothered to read the conflicting and equally plausible story from the airline’s point of view.
@Redwraithvienna: “They had the emergency equipment on board, it didnt work. “
Apparently, that wasn’t the case at all.
From the AP:
The Federal Aviation Administration requires commercial flights to carry no fewer than two oxygen dispensers. The main goal of the rule is to have oxygen available in the event of a rapid cabin decompression, but it can also be used for other emergencies. It is up to the airlines to maintain the canisters.
Flight attendants are trained not to automatically give oxygen to every passenger who requests it but instead use airline criteria to judge when it’s needed, said Leslie Mayo, a spokeswoman for the union representing American’s attendants.
Wilson said Desir’s cousin flagged down a flight attendant and said the woman had diabetes and needed oxygen. “The flight attendant responded, ‘OK, but we usually don’t need to treat diabetes with oxygen, but let me check anyway and get back to you.’”
Wilson said the employee spoke with another flight attendant, and both went to Desir within one to three minutes.
“By that time the situation was worsening, and they immediately began administering oxygen,” he said.
Wilson said the defibrillator was used but that the machine indicated Desir’s heartbeat was too weak to activate the unit.
An automated external defibrillator delivers an electric shock to try to restore a normal heart rhythm if a a particular type of irregular heart beat is detected. The machines cannot help in all cases.
Wilson said three flight attendants helped Desir, but “stepped back” after doctors and nurses on the flight began to help her.
“Our crew acted very admirably. They did what they were trained to do, and the equipment was working,” he said.
Desir was pronounced dead by one of the doctors, Joel Shulkin, and the flight continued to John F. Kennedy International Airport, without stopping in Miami. The woman’s body was moved to the floor of the first-class section and covered with a blanket, Oliver said.
Desir died of complications from heart disease and diabetes, said Ellen Borakove, a spokeswoman for the medical examiner’s office.
Hi, I am a former FA for one of the major US airlines and this story is rather shocking to me for several reasons. People dieing on airplanes is nothing new, but if a passenger is in distress and requests medical assistance it is against Federal Air Regulations (or FAR’s) to not render it.
Secondly, every flight attendant is assigned preflight checks to make sure things like the oxygen tanks are full and ready to go. They are actually used quite often and should also get checked regularly by ground crews and each time a new crew boards a plane. So how could not only one, but two of them been empty is beyond my comprehension.
In my short 1 year career with the airlines, I used oxygen about 10 times, CPR twice and a portable defibrillator once and no one ever died on one of my flights due to the quick reaction of the crew to the situation and no pilot ever turned down making an emergency landing for the sake of someones wellbeing.
This is just AA being lame.
Continental did an emergency landing for me and I was just passing a (rather large 7mm) kidney stone, and it was even an international flight!
Not only did Continental have proper oxygen and defibrillator (obviously unused in my case but I saw it in the cabinet) but they also had an emergency Demerol syringe which came in very handy for me.
I feel truly sorry for this lady and her cousin. I wonder if AA had had proper emergency equipment that this woman would still be alive.
Also, the asshole stewardess who denied the lady aide TWICE should be fired. I know the stewards think they are GODS lately, but they need to be chopped at the knees a little.
The “emergency” oxygen tanks are for flight attendants in case of cabin depressurization so they can move around and help others get their masks on. They are not for passenger health “emergencies”.
“federal law prevents the airlines from allowing passengers to bring their own oxygen canisters, and there is no mandate requiring airlines to provide supplemental oxygen aboard.”
I also don’t think FAs are required to provide medical assistance.
I am not sure the rules for diverting flights especially to other foreign airports but looks like AA can’t be held legally responsible.
Not pertaining to the facts of this particular story, but to more general comments that some of you are making re: people should bring their own equipment.
My mother (a tiny woman, for the sick = must be fat = evil club) has pretty bad asthma. Most of the time, her inhaler works for her – however, every few years, usually in the middle of the night, she’ll have an attack so bad that she has to go to the ER, where they hook her up to oxygen. She has never left a hospital with oxygen.
It’s not probable, but entirely possible that she could be on a plane and have one of these attacks. So, if a plane, where one has no other recourse (to the train dude – in areas where trains tend to operate more, a lot more stops, a lot less time trapped, a lot easier access even in-between stops), neglects to refill its oxygen tanks, a part of pretty basic first aid, then it’s her own damn fault?
I would say that if Consumerist wants to maintain any sort of credibility, this post needs an immediate update and a new headline.
Two reputable news sources have reported directly conflicting information – the deceased’s relative’s claims on NYT on the one hand, and AA’s claims via AP on the other. No Consumerist editor/blogger, and certainly no commenter here, has any first-hand knowledge of this incident that can prove or disprove either version of the events here. More importantly, without a coroner’s ruling, no one can really say what cause this woman’s death.
To leave this headline posted, without at minimum adding attribution (“Relative: Woman dies after…”), is irresponsible and misleading. To leave this post up without acknowledging the new information that’s come out today is the equivalent of journalistic malpractice.
And everybody in the comments going absolutely apeshit based solely on one side’s version of the incident, without acknowledging that it may not be true, needs to STFU.
@Redwraithvienna: Perhaps everyone commenting here should take a deep breath before laying all the blame on the airline. All you have heard is one side of the story from an understandably distraught family member. Subsequent stories have shed more light on the situation.
I’m no corporate shill, but I have to lay some blame on Consumerist as well when it makes these semi-hysterical, one-sided posts.
@PotKettleBlack: And you will probably get it too.
@B: chill out, the problem is no one is at fault in the end, someone died 35,000 feet up in the air. not much you can do about it when your time has come.
The family of the deceased has been asked by American Airlines to pay the cost of her upgrade to first class.
However, they agreed to discount the upgrade by $25 since she didn’t ask for any inflight beverage serve or food.
What a great airline!!
@CaliforniaCajun: Crap man, get over yourself. If you can’t spot a tongue-in-cheek comment, then you need to refrain from such long winded or self righteous rants.
I wasn’t being completely serious, but merely mocking that element that does exist on these threads, those who have a knee jerk first reaction to blame the victim (if you don’t fall in to that category then bully for you). Nor was I singling anyone out, so lighten up.
@Kanti_V2: The knee-jerk reaction, as you put it (i.e. skepticism of the relative’s account), looks to be correct.
I join those asking Consumerist to update the post to include the whole story, and to try a little bit to avoid half-baked sensationalistic accounts in the future.
@camille_javal:
If your mother is that ill she shouldn’t be traveling where help can not reach her. I have terrible allergies. Sometimes I go into anaphylactic shock, I do not leave home without epinephrine and Benadryl. If someone took those things away from me I would not get on a plane. End of story.
But that’s beside the point. You don’t need to travel, you don’t. You might want to travel your work might like you to travel you might even get fired if you don’t travel but at the end of the day you’re the one who is going to die so really it’s up to you.
Your airline isn’t EMS (there is a very expensive, very high tech area of aviation that fills this niche) short of very run of the mill events they are not prepared to take care of you. What would you have the airline do? Staff a doctor on every flight? A trained paramedic? Require they all have malpractice insurance? That would get pretty expensive pretty quick.
One side is saying “our equipment worked and doctors responded to our requests for help.” The other side is saying O2 didn’t help her with diabetic shock (um, yea, it wouldn’t).
Perhaps the fact that most US carriers treat their passengers like prisoners these days is the reason that most people are jumping to conclusions and blaming AA.
The airlines can hardly expect anyone to give them the benefit of the doubt, or merely to be neutral and non-commital, when they are treated with rudeness and often, hostility.
And as many have pointed out, the airlines will land on a dime to have a passenger arrested for being a “threat” but will sail on to NY with a corpse on the floor and think nothing of it.
American, along with United and Continental, is an abysmal airline and this is just the chickens coming home to roost.
@B:
The 3oz rule would only apply to liquid oxygen…though I’m not sure of the TSA’s requirements on compressed gasses…
@DoctorMD: Wow – I had no idea. So then what if someone who requires oxygen or carries their own tank around with them needs to get from NY to LA…they’re SOL as far as flying goes?
Not being snitty here – just simply curious!
This is so sad. She was only a year older than my mother…..
@rustyni: “This is so sad. She was only a year older than my mother…..”
That’s OK. She’ll keep getting older – she just won’t be around to enjoy it.
@Ayo: Sorry Ayo, but how are we to trust posts when very basic facts are incorrect? This is purely sloppy work. If your going to do something, do it right, or don’t bother doing it at all. Had someone taken two minutes to proof read the post, they would have caught these mistakes.
@hugowren: were you reading at all?
@Shadowman615: Actually, can you back that up. If someone jumps from a building and you shoot him when it is 99.999999% sure he will die on impact on the ground, why is it murder? Did the bullet kill him or just wound him? Was he already dead from a heart attack when you hit him? Because one might be assault or illegal use of a weapon, and the other possibly desecration of private property, but not murder. That’s a far cry, and I highly doubt it has ever been seen in the inside of a court.
@chrisdag:
[www.guardian.co.uk]
Box was not “effective”. Like I meantioned before, it could just not have been useful in her situation. Like smelling salts for a bullet wound (shock not withstanding)
@Lo-Pan:
Unfortunately, she was already dead. Since her final destination (no pun) was NYC, she probably had family there, and economically speaking for the family, having her corpse near family and where she would likely be buried is/was the right thing to do. I’m not sure of the costs of transporting a corpse from Miami to NYC as well as rebooking the guy’s flight, but if it could have been avoided…
@monkeyboy13:
The effectiveness of the o2 tanks is pointless. If she got o2 and it didn’t work, things would be okay from a “we tried” perspective. It’s the whole, we have them but they don’t work “your useless’ perspective. And what makes the empty o2 tanks different is in the words. Empty/did not work vs. Effective for the defib. Effective = it physically/mechanically was working as designed, medically, it did not help.
@scoosdad: Read the updated article. The plane has 12 containers. FAA requires atleast 2. AA says all 12 were working. No update from impartial doctor.
@poodlepoodle: Some doctors still believe in the Hippocratic Oath…
@CaliforniaCajun: I would call that a bias source (AA PR employee). Until a statement by one of the doctors or nurses, It stays that it is undetermined.
@axiomatic: Noone said they were rude or powertripping about it. Not even the family with the deceased.
@DoctorMD: The AP has the FAA stating otherwise. Tanks can be used for other emergencies. And flight attendents have chimed in that they are required to help in that situation, atleast as in as far as they can.
@sncreducer: Those two sources (Boston, and MSNBC) are both just mirroring the sam, newer AssociatedPress release. The NYT is the older AP release. The newer release has the same claims that the first had, but with AA PR response added. The newer release is just an update, not a whole new article.
@poodlepoodle: Other side is that there was no o2 in the tanks. The defib worked but didn’t help.
@CaliforniaCajun: That type of snark should be illegal for being so delicious.
Unbelievable.
Complaining about no emergency O2 on board, when AA waived their right to charge her estate for Cadaver Shipping to JFK.
Not gonna read through all this, but have my 2 cents: 1. this lady was clearly already a very very sick woman, on the verge of dying. 2. it was HER choice to make this trip in such poor health. 3. whether or not the tanks were full of O2, airlines are NOT even required to stock this item, so legally this IS a moot point from all angles. 4. there’s no guarantee O2 would have helped this lady – here’s my hypothesis: she formed a DVT during the flight TO Haiti, and in the return flight the DVT bust up, traveled north, and lodged in her lungs. a very very bad situation that even fully equipped ERs often aren’t able to reverse. 5. Airline attendants frequently deal with passengers who are panicky fliers, get agitated, complain of “not being able to breathe”, so the fact that it took several cries for help to get adequately recognized as a real problem isn’t that hard to understand, or forgive.
Believe me, I HATE airlines as a rule, but I just don’t see this incident as being well researched, or ‘newsworthy’ at this point. Perhaps the autopsy will provide some better answers to what happened.
she sounded like a medical train wreck.
@banmojo: She was not a very very sick woman. If she looked that sickly, the airline would have denied boarding. Easier to write off upset customer then dead in mid-air.
Two, they are required to carry o2, for both catastrophic emergencies and individual emergancies.
Three, it doesn’t matter if it would or not helped. They had the tanks, they were apparently empty. Its barbaric. If you were dying of dehydration in the desert, ask me for some water, I say I have some, you get hope, then I say, nope, opps, ran out. Twice. That’s fucked up. Especially when they are required to have it and they did have it. Do it right or don’t do it.
@CaliforniaCajun:
In this case my 4th paragraph comes into play : Bad luck.
Otherwise i stand with my post. If someones dies cause the equipment that should be working isnt working there is no excuse.
@rjhiggins:
I am not saying that (read paragrapoh 4 of my post).
I am just saying that IF she could have been saved by means which should be available on an airplane emergency kit and wasnt due to faulty equipment THEN this is a huge problem.
IF she just died cause she was an obese diabetic with a heart problem and nothing on this pkane could be done too safe her -> bad luck.
So far, apparently the only part telling their story is the (Ka-CHING!) cousin, who was obviously upset, and perhaps did not understand what was happening.
Doubtful the two O2 canisters tried were empty, but probably wouldn’t have changed the outcome.
The “drop-down” masks only provide O2 for a few minutes via a chemical rxn, meant to allow the pilot to descend to a better level. They will NOT get you from Haiti to Miami.
AEDs (Automated External Defibrillators) are programmed to ONLY discharge if they sense ventricular fibrillation or tachycardia. They will NOT discharge for any other rhythm (AF, asystole, sinus tach, etc.)
They will also not help any other condition, and could (except for those two rhythms) KILL YOU! That’s why they are made that way, and are out in the public.
She likely had a whopping MI, dissection or pulmonary embolism. Even the Docs on board, without a lotta meds & monitors, could do nothing. And no, FAs are NOT responsible for being ACLS certified. Interesting the poster’s comment on Demerol being on board. May have to experience some wicked flank pain on my next trip.
And as for the Docs & RNs on board, they’re better off not commenting. They did their best and stepped in. But anything they would be (or are misquoted as) saying now can and WILL be used against them later.
Did she have the fish?
@m4nea: Actually, were YOU reading? Maybe you should know what your talking about before you say something. When this story was originally posted, the Consumerist writer got a number of basic facts regarding the story completely wrong. The writer later went and corrected those errors after I brought them to light. Get a clue.
@dabofug:
FYI. The oxygen generators will only provide 6 minutes of oxygen.
CNN.com has a lead story titled “Don’t feel great? Rethink flying, expert says.” The article alludes to this story.
And, being good Consumerist readers, we can imagine the airlines’ reaction if we decide we are too ill to fly. Refund?! Rescheduling without a substantial penalty fee?
So…. “Don’t feel great? Rethink flying, but then rethink the money you’re going to lose, and also think about how horrible the customer service is likely to be while you’re trying to get a refund or reschedule…. and think about how much aggravation it is to fly anyway, shouldn’t you just get it over with….” might be a more accurate story.
Frankly, after reading the linked Boston Herald story, the situation seems a lot less outrageous.
But several things do trouble me about this:
1) How does a flight attendant truly decide if a person is in need of O2 or any medical attention? A set of criteria written by a corporate board of MDs and RNs is a start, but…
2) Are the flight attendants (FAs) trained and CERTIFIED in First Aid procedures?
3) How can a FA (and in turn American Airlines) deny assistance in the first place?
Oh, and BTW community, heart disease is the number #1 killer of men and women in this country. The occurrence of diabetes in also increasing in this country due to the increase of obesity. Many posters already have alluded to her health issues, God forbid it, if you happen to have health issues while you are on a trip. Disgusting.
@mercnet:
Best comment. It’s a good measure of the country, isn’t it?
@snoop-blog:
I think the best idea would’ve been for them to put her into the first class bathroom. At least she’d be out of the way and out of sight, even if first class (or steerage class, whichever) had to use the other bathroom.