An Orange County family sued Southwest Airlines on Monday after saying that flight attendants failed to help a dying husband and father on board a flight that landed at John Wayne Airport in September.
Richard Anthony Ilczyszyn, 46, died 17 hours after suffering a pulmonary embolism, or a blood clot in his lung, while inside the bathroom of a Sept. 19 evening flight from Oakland to Orange County aboard Southwest. The suit says the flight crew failed to help Ilczyszyn and called the Orange County Sheriff’s Department to report a disturbance.
Ilczyszyn was heard screaming and crying in a locked, rear bathroom on the plane by several flight attendants, who were named in the wrongful death lawsuit. One opened the door manually from the outside and observed him sitting with his “head down, slumped over, making ‘groaning’ and ‘crying’ noises,” Deputy O. Hall, who spoke to the flight attendants at the scene, wrote in the police report.
Jenna Harrison, a flight attendant named in the lawsuit, told deputies that Ilczyszyn intentionally closed the door and held it shut with his foot, which prompted officials to evacuate the plane around 10:15 p.m. before attending to Ilczyszyn once the plane landed, about 10 minutes after the initial screams were heard.
During the evacuation, Ilczyszyn, a financial trader, remained in the bathroom alone, unconscious and did not receive oxygen to his brain. He lost his pulse before paramedics arrived, according to the complaint.
At 10:35 p.m., deputies pulled Ilczyszyn out of the bathroom, and he was given CPR before being taken to Hoag Hospital in Irvine, where he remained on life support until his death at 5:13 p.m. the next day.
The family claims the Southwest Airlines crew contributed to his death by treating him as a threat instead of helping him medically, according to Andrew Spielberger, one of the attorneys representing Ilczyszyn’s family.
“The main motivation is to make flight attendants aware or sensitive to passengers’ illness so there is no assumption that someone who is not acting normally is not a troublemaker, but could be someone in distress,” Spielberger said. “Pulmonary embolisms happen more than just rarely on planes; we would think that the training protocols for all airlines, not just some, should train attendants to identify symptoms of an embolism and possibly be able to give them aid in the air.”
Southwest Airlines officials offered condolences to Ilczyszyn’s family but denied responsibility in his death.
“According to our crew reports, it appears to have been an unfortunate medical event that we believe our flight attendants handled appropriately and professionally,” Southwest Airlines communications director Brandy King said in an email. “Reports indicate that our crew attempted to reach the customer in an effort to provide assistance, and our pilot arranged for first responders to meet the flight upon arrival in Orange County.”
Contact the writer: 714-796-7802 or aduranty@ocregister.com
Source: southwest - Google News http://ift.tt/1yUJOVw
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