A new low in airline customer service
A recent news story recounted the unfortunate death of a female passenger on a recent American Airlines flight from Haiti to JFK airport in New York:
NEW YORK (AP) — Struggling to breathe, American Airlines passenger Carine Desir asked for oxygen, but a flight attendant twice refused her request, the woman’s cousin said.
Carine Desir was having trouble breathing and asked for oxygen, her cousin says.“Don’t let me die,” the cousin, Antonio Oliver, recalled Desir saying after the attendant allegedly refused at first to administer the oxygen Friday.
But Desir did die, Oliver said Sunday in a telephone interview.
He said the flight attendant finally relented but various medical devices on the plane failed, including two oxygen tanks that were found to be empty and what may have been a defibrillator that seemed to malfunction.
You can read the rest of the story here. While this story is very sad and upsetting, unfortunately I can’t say that it’s terribly surprising. A flight attendant refusing a passenger’s request for assistance, empty supplemental oxygen tanks (makes you wonder if those oxygen masks that are supposed to drop from the ceiling in the event of a loss of cabin pressure would actually work), and a malfunctioning defibrillator all point to the declining customer service standards of the airline industry. The bottom line these days is that you just don’t matter. It’s sad but true.
February 25, 2008 at 2:42 pm
While the airlines has a responsibility to have working medical equipment and procedures for their flights, I think the circumstances surrounding this are a bit suspect. Just by looking at her picture she appears to be a very, very large woman. Personally I’m tired of society being asked to bear the burden of people who are ridiculously obese.
February 25, 2008 at 8:21 pm
Jeff, your point is well taken — I agree that people who are not healthy enough to fly shouldn’t fly (or should travel with supplemental oxygen of their own,) but I don’t see how flight attendants responding promptly to requests for medical assistance and airlines having working medical equipment in any way constitute a “burden” that society has to bear. Frankly, I would rather have an obese person on my flight than some of the obnoxious alpha-male business travelers I usually have to put up with.