Posted on 02/24/2008 8:14:18 PM PST by Paleo Conservative
NEW YORK — 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.
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AEDs read and analyze electrical activity from the patient's heart to detect shockable rhythms. If a shockable rhythm is present, the AED can deliver measured and carefully timed jolts of electricity to restore a normal rhythm. The process requires more hardware and software than "just some capacitors and a switch."
So do you! ;^)
I thought they didn’t allow oxygen tanx on airlinez after what happened to ValuJet.
As cargo.
Why have the imitation crab salad when the real thing is so close at hand?
Chicken hot dogs, chicken "meatball" sandwiches, “fishy” crab salad.
Not even close to the real thing.
Sometimes we fake ourselves out.
Are you kidding?????
There aren’t enough RN’s to staff hospitals in the USA any you want them flying around, passing peanuts and boose?
It wasn’t so long ago that airliners had NO medical equipment aboard..... and I don’t think that there is any legal requirement to do so.
Also, if the lady would have died anyway even with O2, and there was no “shockable” cardiac arrythmia, the lack of 02 or a working defibrillator is irrelevent.
Oxygen is a medication; giving it requires a MD order, EMT protocol, or up to 2 liters/minute as a nursing judgement.
O2 can KILL a COPD patient by robbing them of their respiratory drive.
An untrained flight attendant giving oxygen to a passenger is practicing medicine w/o a license.
OK ,, you win ,, it also requires a $5 discriminator circuit..
I see more than one. What’s sad is that some lawyer will persuade her family to sue everyone -=- including the docs and nurses who happened to be on the flight and tried to save her. In the carpet-bombing of lawsuits, the good Samaritans will be hosed!
Worth repeating.
Sounds more like a pulmonary embolism. Very possibly neither oxygen or defib would have helped her.
Interesting how the oxygen bottles are kept in the passenger cabin. The pilots have their own oxygen.
The problem is too much fricken tv. People see things and think that it works that way in real life when it never does.
I’d like to hear both sides of this story.
What happened to Valu-Jet was not an oxygen bottle but an oxygen generator two very different things bot are considered Hazardous Material. The Oxygen generator cannot be shipped on an aircraft of any type which is in contrast to the Oxygen bottle that can.
AMERICAN AIRLINES STATEMENT REGARDING DEATH OF PASSENGER
FORT WORTH, Texas – American Airlines is very saddened over the death of passenger Carine Desir on Flight 896 from Haiti to New York’s JFK Airport last Friday and extends its deepest sympathy to the grieving family.
We are investigating this incident, as we do with all serious medical situations onboard our aircraft, but American Airlines can say oxygen was administered and the Automatic External Defibrillator was applied.
Among the preflight duties of our highly trained Flight Attendants is a check of all emergency equipment on the aircraft. This includes checking the oxygen bottles – there were 12 in this particular aircraft. We stand behind the actions and training of our crew and the functionality of the onboard medical equipment. We are also grateful to medical volunteers on this flight who came to the aid of a fellow traveler during flight.
You think she was a HONDA?
I was wondering if she was a diabetic because of the extreme thirst.
I am inclined to believe that the relative of Carine Desir misinterpreted what was going on in the cabin as non-functioning equipment and incompetence because there was probably a lot of things going on to help the woman. In the end, they were unable to save her, and that just compounded his frustration and grief, and probably why he believes the equipment was inoperable.
I guess we will see as more details come out. But as a former flight attendant, I just cannot imagine that someone missed the pre-flight check of more than one O2 bottle. That would be a huge violation.
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