Qantas Facing Lawsuit After Toddler Loses Fingertip
Jeff Edwards February 28, 2017
A family is taking Qantas to court, seeking nearly a quarter of a million dollars over injuries to a two-year-old child that were allegedly caused by a faulty in-flight entertainment device.
Parents of a two-year-old child say that a hazardously installed inflight entertainment unit in the economy cabin of a Qantas A300 permanently injured their young son. The family says that after the toddler lost part of his finger when the device fell on his hand in the early minutes of a fight from Manila Ninoy Aquino International Airport (MNL) to Sydney Airport (SYD) on January 14, the captain refused to either divert or return to the Philippines for emergency medical treatment.
Now, the family is taking the airline to court seeking at least $200,000 in damages.
“It was only an hour and a half into the flight,” the injured child’s mother Natalie Dela Cruz told The Telegraph. “We had another six hours until we got to Sydney. It felt like the longest, worst flight of my life and we’ve done a lot of flying.”
According to Cruz, her son’s hand was on an armrest when the unit’s video screen came loose, causing the gruesome injury to his hand.
“The entertainment unit kept falling down, and to entertain a two-year-old you have to try to keep that TV up,” Cruz explained. “His hand was on the armrest, and when the unit fell down it cut his finger quite deeply.”
The mom who described the incident as “very stressful” and “very traumatic,” says her child was assisted by a medical doctor on the flight, but that her pleas for the pilot to turn the plane around so that her son could get emergency treatment in a hospital, repeatedly fell on deaf ears.
An airline spokesperson told the newspaper that “they could understand how upsetting the incident was for the family involved” in a statement. “We were fortunate to have the assistance of a surgeon on-board and the Captain also briefed MedLink who advised that due to the stable condition of the child it would be better to continue to Sydney.”
[Photo: Shutterstock]
Seriously? They wanted a plane to turn around from Manila just for a finger? They would get MUCH better medical treatment in Sydney. Makes no sense at all.
"The entertainment unit kept falling down". Does it mean it was defective, they knew it, and yet kept trying to use it ?