The woman says the alarming text came moments before her flight from New Orleans to Milwaukee was set to take off, when he sent a message asking her for forgiveness for committing suicide, reports WTMJ-4 News (warning: link contains video that auto-plays).
“I started shaking the minute I got the text and I was panicked, I didn’t know what to do,” she said, adding that she immediately replied “no,” and went to call him.
But a flight attendant making her final checks told her she had to turn her phone off or put it in airplane mode, and “slapped the phone down,” the passenger says.
When she explained the situation, the woman says the attendant told her it was “FAA regulations.”
After the flight reached cruising altitude she explained what was going on to another crewmember, saying she begged her to somehow get an emergency call out, but that that attendant also said there was nothing she could do.
“I just wanted someone to go and try to save him,” she added.
Instead, she says she sat crying in her seat for the next two hours. When she arrived at the gate in Milwaukee, she immediately called the police. Upon arriving home, officers informed her that her husband had died.
Southwest Airlines issued a statement to WTMJ-4, saying:
“Our hearts go out to the family during this difficult time. Flight attendants are trained to notify the Captain if there is an emergency that poses a hazard to the aircraft or to the passengers on-board. In this situation, the pilots were not notified.”
That almost seems to make it worse, as the woman says she thinks she could’ve changed what happened that day if given the chance.
“The pain of knowing something could have been done, it breaks my heart,” she told the station.
A call for help: Local woman looking for answers after her husband took his own life [WTMJ-4 News]
There are FAA regulations. There is company policy. And there is common sense.
Had the flight attendant had the common sense and decency to notify the pilots *at*the*time* it would not have been difficult for the airline to contact local police. In turn, local police could have made a welfare check to her husband, possibly saving his life.
We will never know.
Chalk this up to another airline “oopsie,” a belated apology and “we are looking into our policies” statement. What will not change is someone is dead, and it will never be known if a life could have been saved.
Condolences to the widow.
In flight all they had to do is radio the tower. But Southwest doesn’t care about lives, only the ‘bottom line’ and it would have made their flight late to even take 5 minutes to look into this. Profits before lives, courtesy of Southwest Airlines. Shareholders will be happy with the airline for preserving profit at the cost of this man’s life.