Excerpts: 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.
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.
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.
I was listening to 1010 wins, and they were talking about the upcoming trial of the police officers who murdered Sean Bell and gravely injured his friends. Hey, business as usual, I don’t think these officers will come to justice, but what struck me profoundly was the sound bite in which the Defense felt a justified course of action in proving that the shoot was legit, would be to dissect the “state of mind” of the police officers.
That’s right dear reader, their “state of mind”. In other words, their perception as to what type of threat Sean Bell and his friends posed. Now their perception, according to the prosecutor, was that what they heard and were told lead them to believe that the group of young men were armed, as if their perception of these men ended there. I ask you, if the men in question were white and say, for instance, were dressed like Pete Wentz, do you think they would have approached their vehicle with drawn guns?
It’s quite evident to me that how a person perceives you can mean life or death to you. I wonder how this woman was perceived by the flight attendant. Sure, maybe the flight crew knew that their medical equipment didn’t work and had hoped the woman was exaggerating. What does that say for their protocols with regards to public safety though? God forbid that cabin pressure is lost. Was the entire flight of passengers in danger of suffocating to death? This story reeks on so many levels. They didn’t stop in Miami to remove the deceased woman and instead subjected the passengers to knowingly fly with a dead body on board. And instead of showing the woman some respect, they laid the woman on the floor of the first class cabin. Last time I flew first class my seat reclined.
