Relative Complains After Death on Flight

[RadioFreeSeaLab]

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8V136T00&show_article=1
Relative Complains After Death on Flight   

Feb 24 11:15 PM US/Eastern
By RICHARD PYLE
Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK (AP) - An American Airlines passenger died after a flight attendant told her he couldn't give her any oxygen and then tried to help her with faulty equipment, including an empty oxygen tank, a relative said.
The airline confirmed the flight death and said medical professionals had tried to save the passenger, Carine Desir, who was returning home to Brooklyn from Haiti.

Desir, who had heart disease, died of natural causes, medical examiner's office spokeswoman Ellen Borakove said Sunday.

Desir had complained of not feeling well and being very thirsty on the Friday flight from Port-au-Prince after she ate a meal, according to Antonio Oliver, a cousin who was traveling with her and her brother Joel Desir. A flight attendant gave her water, he said.

A few minutes later, Desir said she was having trouble breathing and asked for oxygen, but a flight attendant twice refused her request, Oliver said Sunday in a telephone interview.

After the flight attendant refused to administer oxygen to Desir, she became distressed, pleading, "Don't let me die," Oliver recalled.

Other passengers aboard Flight 896 became agitated over the situation, he said, 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.

Two doctors and two nurses were aboard and tried to administer oxygen from a second tank, which also was empty, Oliver said.

Desir was put on the floor, and a nurse tried CPR, to no avail, Oliver said. A "box," possibly a defibrillator, also was applied but didn't function effectively, he said.

"I cannot believe what is happening on the plane," he said, sobbing. "She cannot get up, and nothing on the plane works."

Oliver said he then asked for the plane to "land right away so I can get her to a hospital," and the pilot agreed to divert to Miami, 45 minutes away. But during that time, Desir died, Oliver said.

"Her last words were, 'I cannot breathe,'" he said.

Desir, 44, was pronounced dead by one of the doctors, Joel Shulkin, and the flight continued to Kennedy International Airport without stopping in Miami, with the woman's body moved to the floor of the first-class section and covered with a blanket, Oliver said.

American Airlines spokeswoman Sonja Whitemon wouldn't comment Sunday on Oliver's claims of faulty medical equipment. Shulkin, through his attorney, Justin Nadeau, declined to comment on the incident out of respect for Desir's family.

American Airlines, a unit of AMR Corp. and based in Fort Worth, Texas, is the largest domestic airline.

Maybe she would've died anyway, but come on, empty O2 tanks?

[trapperready]

died of natural causes

Neglect and incompetence by the airlines is now "natural causes".

Just so long as we all know that.

[Sergeant Bob]

Really strange title I think. So, the story is about a relative complaining?
Seems like it should focus a bit more on the woman dieing.

I think American might get smacked pretty hard on this one, and rightfully so.
A passenger plane with no oxygen, beside the contention they initially refused to administer the oxygen they didn't have.

[AmbulanceDriver]

Actually, I don't believe that the airlines are required to have emergency oxygen on board for medical emergencies.  I don't know for sure though.  Perhaps one of the pilot types could weigh in on it.

However, it seems like the family knew this woman was pretty ill.  So for them to fail to make arrangements with the airline to have medical oxygen on board the aircraft seems to me to be the families fault, not the airlines.  This is the information from www.smartertravel.com:

According to the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), 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. As a result, there is no oxygen provided on some low-cost carriers such as Southwest and JetBlue, or on certain regional or shuttle flights operated by the major airlines.


However, most of the legacy airlines, including American, United, Delta, US Airways, Northwest, and Continental, do offer in-flight oxygen on many routes, provided you give them at least 48 hours notice of your need and pay a hefty fee. Fees vary, but most airlines charge per flight segment. American, for example, charges $100 per segment, so if you were to book a round-trip flight with one connection each way, you'd pay a $400 fee. Airlines also usually require authorization from your doctor that supplemental oxygen is medically necessary.

Airlines do not provide oxygen on the ground, so you must make arrangements for friends, relatives, or local suppliers to bring you oxygen before departure, during layovers, between connecting flights, and after arrival. Oxygen is only allowed through security checkpoints after it passes x-ray and explosive trace detection screening.

To minimize hassles, plan your flights well in advance. Here are some tips:

Go to your airlines' website or call its customer service number to determine its policies regarding in-flight oxygen.
Talk to your doctor to obtain the necessary authorization and to make sure flying is safe for you.
When booking, try to reserve non-stop flights during off-peak hours if possible.
Visit the websites of the TSA and the National Home Oxygen Patient's Association for more detailed information about air travel with medical oxygen.

[Sergeant Bob]

Those are some incredibly stupid rules but, what can we expect from the gov.

They may not be required to supply medical O2 but, if they don't allow you to bring it with you, then someone should (in a sensible world) be required to provide it at no cost to the user.

Even if they don't have medical O2, the aircraft should have a passenger O2 system to be used in case of decompression. I wonder why they didn't try that?

[Gewehr98]

Easy answer: Passenger O2 is for cabin decompression, and has an aneroid that turns the flow on when cabin altitude exceeds 14,000 feet. It won't work if cabin altitude is 10,000 feet or lower. There is also a diluter valve that mixes ambient air with the oxygen flow depending on what the cabin altitude reads.

So passenger O2 wouldn't have done squat for her, because the cabin hadn't depressurized to an emergency level, and pulling down a mask from overhead to activate it would have set the diluter valve to give her cabin air vs. a flow of 100% O2, regardless.

The best she could've hoped for is to use one of the several portable oxygen bottles normally carried onboard, but as stated previously in this thread, there's no mandate these days to carry them.  Looks like the lawyers are going to have to fight this one out. 

[AmbulanceDriver]

Sgt. Bob, I gotta disagree with you on that, for a couple of reasons.  Medical oxygen is a prescription drug.  It must be prescribed for you.  One of the reasons for that is that in high concentrations, for long periods of time, it's actually toxic.  So you have to know what you're doing in order to administer it.  It's not just "slap on the mask or the nose hose and crank it open".  

Additionally, medical oxygen is actually kinda spendy.  So while I can understand the sentiment, I don't want to pay for someone else's medical oxygen every time I fly.  And lastly, I don't want just any yahoo bringing a cylinder of *highly* compressed gas (2100 psi on a full tank), purportedly oxygen, into a pressurized tube at 30,000 feet.  I've seen those tanks fail.  It ain't pretty when it's on the ground.  At 30,000 feet in an aluminum tube, it'd be disastrous.  

And not to stir the terrorism bug, but can you think of a better means of commiting mass murder/suicide than with a tank of say, highly compressed hydrogen cyanide?  Or even something as simple as carbon monoxide?  Just so you're aware, CO has a higher binding affinity to hemoglobin then O2 does.  In order to reverse severe CO poisoning, you have to have a hyperbaric chamber.

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

How is this even remotely the airline's fault? 

The woman got on an airplane.  Airplanes fly way up high in the sky.  There aren't any hospitals way up high in the sky, those are all on the ground.  What was the airline crew supposed to do, imaginate an emergency room into existence at 50,000 feet, just ebcause this woman suddenly needed one?

If you have a medical condition that requires special equipment close at hand 24/7, then bring that equipment with you.  If you can't bring it with you, don't leave.  For crissakes, don't leave it hundreds of miles away and then start bitching when it turns out that nobody else thought to pack a spare for you.

I nominate Carine Desir for this years Darwin Award.

[AmbulanceDriver]

HTG, my point exactly.  I just heard an update from a co-worker, she apparently died of a pulmonary embolism.

[lupinus]

Flight attendants are not medical personnel and as already stated, giving oxygen is more complicated then just slapping on a mask and opening the valve.  Hell, I'm willing to bet I and the other responders at my work have more training then the average flight attendant and they shot down the oxygen recommendations for us in about thirty seconds. 

Fact is this woman was sick and knew she had a condition.  Whenever you step foot on a plane common sense tells you you will be pretty far from a hospital and best case they can divert and have you at one in a couple hours.  If you may need something specific in the mean time you need to bring it with you.

But I think having oxygen available but empty could come back to bite the airline in the ass.  It may be possible for a lawyer to twist it into negligence as they provided a means that was not adequate due to their error and played a role in her death.

[Bigjake]

American Airlines would be in much deeper doggie excrement had they've killed her through misuse of highly concentrated O2, and the worst part would've been that they were trying to help.

[lupinus]

Quite possible.  However like I said, having it aboard but not in working order shows negligence on their part for not keeping available equipment properly maintained.  I'm sure plenty of lawyers could twist that.