OverpaidSlacker
Oct 5, 03, 8:07 am
a while back someone commented that as a doctor, she had been called upon numerous times while traveling to assist someone with medical needs. i posted that this had never happened to me. apparently, i jinxed myself.
we (my fiancee and i) were sitting in row 1 aboard us airways flight 893 on our way home from germany the other day, after spending a week in the czech republic and in germany at oktoberfest in munich. about two hours into the flight, the pilot makes a casual announcement over the p.a. system that there are some passengers onboard who don't feel well and that we will be diverting to london gatwick so that they can get medical attention. i decided to find out what was going on and offer my assistance (i'm an emergency medicine doctor), but before i could put away my entertainment monitor and stand up, there was a somewhat more panicked announcement on the p.a. system -- a flight attendant, calling for "oxygen canisters and medical personnel" to row 9.
turns out there were several people on board (all in the same small area in the aircraft) who became ill with similar symptoms. two of them were flight attendants, and there was at least one passenger as well (i heard rumors that there were another couple people who were also sick, but i cannot confirm this, as i only tended to the three people i mentioned).
it turned out there were at least eight physicians on the plane, but only me and this other guy (who is a board-certified medical oncologist, but who describes himself as "a terminally differentiated beureaucrat" because he has done only pharmaceutical research work for the last 20-25 years) volunteered to help. fortunately, all of our "patients" responded reasonably well to oxygen and rest, although one of them never got back to baseline and was repeatedly symptomatic every time the oxygen was removed even briefly.
once everyone was somewhat better, one of the other flight attendants came to me a my new terminally differentiated friend and asked, "since they're better, do you think we still need to divert?"
the one "patient" in particular genuinely needed to be evaluated in a manner more sophisticated than we could undertake in an airplane at 36,000 feet, so we agreed, in front of 250 people who our decision was inconvenciencing, that we should indeed divert.
well, for whatever reason, the pilot came on the p.a. shortly after that and announced that we would be landing in shannon, ireland instead of london. once we were on the ground in shannon, they held us in the duty-free area for almost five hours before concluding that even if there was no mechanical issue with the aircraft (which was a concern, since so many people in the same area had developed symptoms), the flight crew couldn't fly us home anymore because of the faa work/rest rules.
i'll skip all the unpleasantries that numerous passengers hurled at the airline & airport representatives about being grounded overnight. suffice it to say that people weren't very understanding. it got ugly for a while.
so they arranged to have us shuttled off to hotels (envoy pax to one, coach to another). dinner (complimentary) was actually very good, and they agreed to allow us each a couple brief international phone calls to update family members about our predicament.
on the whole, i thought that us airways did a very good job handling a difficult situation that day. they really did make the most of a tough situation, and they did it at expediently and efficiently as they could.
the next day, however, started out as one big cluster4uck. they bused all the passengers back to shannon airport 3.5 hours before our scheduled departure time (1455 hours), dropped us all off in front of the check in counter, and then didn't open up our flight for checkin until nearly 90 minutes later. when they did, there was no envoy or preferred checkin line. it was one frenzied mad dash to the checkin counters. the people checking passports and asking the security questions were completely overwhlemed. i personally witnessed three passengers get past the passport/security people without being addressed, and the couple immediately in front of me in "line" spoke only german (remember, we had originally departed from frankfurt). instead of requesting that somebody help her translate, she made several futile attempts at communicating, then said, "ok, i'll just put these on here. you don't look scary." and they didn't -- they were in their 60's and dressed in traditional german clothes. but c'mon!!
we found out after we'd checked in that they had grounded our old a330 (our crew from the day before were going to ferry it back to phl empty later that evening, just in case there was some issue they couldn't detect during their inspection in shannon). instead, they cancelled that day's LGW-PHL flight and had that pilot come over from LGW to SNN in his a330 and take us home (presumably, they rerouted the london pax through CLT and/or PIT).
it turned out that the LGW-PHL flight was supposed to have been our "new" captain's retirement flight. he ferried the a330 LGW-SNN empty -- except for about eight of his family members, who were also onboard. they were all exceptionally nice. when we got onboard, we were surprised to see that they had decorated the plane with banners and streamers, etc. it actually looked kind of festive. even the flight attendants were obviously in a good mood.
i'm not sure why (maybe because the captain's family was there and occupying some seats), but the seat assignments from the day prior didn't carry over. i can't complain too much because my fiancee and i still wound up in row 1, but they couldn't seat us together (we wound up next to each other via trade). but other people travelling together were far less fortunate than we were.
interestingly, it turns out that there's a tradition for pilots who are flying their retirement flight. they bring fire trucks out to the runway and launch streams off water up and over the airplane as it taxis onto the runway (and then also in the arriving airport, the flight is greeted with another similar "water halo" as it exits the runway after slowing down when it has landed. that was really cool to see.
the captain came out several times, greeted a number of passengers, thanked them for flying us airways, and encouraged them to continue flying us airways in the future. a class act, i thought, since this guy was undergoing forced retirement (he turned 60 the next day) shortly after his pension had been whacked by the costcutters in crystal city. he also made a couple poigniant (sp?) amnouncements during our flight about his career and his family. it was very nice. on our arrival, the entire plane applauded, and he came back on the p.a. and thanked us again.
there was a book the captain's family passed around for everybody to sign during the flight, including all the pax onboard. when it got to me, i flipped through it breifly to see what people had said. i was pleasantly surprised to find no nasty comments about missed business meetings, lost baggage (which happened to a couple people whose bags never turned up in SNN for some reason), screwed-up seating assignments, plastic cups, or anything else.
when we arrived in philadelphia, i didn't hear a single negative thing about us airways or the experience of being stuck for an extra day in shannon. the us airways employees who handled our diversion and new "connecting flight" out of shannon, it turned out, did an excellent job making something positive come out of a pretty bad situation.
sorry, for the novel. thought some of you might like to read this.
the flights, incidentally, haven't posted to my account yet. i'm curious to see how they'll post.
-- he who is especially loquacious this morning
[This message has been edited by OverpaidSlacker (edited 10-07-2003).]
we (my fiancee and i) were sitting in row 1 aboard us airways flight 893 on our way home from germany the other day, after spending a week in the czech republic and in germany at oktoberfest in munich. about two hours into the flight, the pilot makes a casual announcement over the p.a. system that there are some passengers onboard who don't feel well and that we will be diverting to london gatwick so that they can get medical attention. i decided to find out what was going on and offer my assistance (i'm an emergency medicine doctor), but before i could put away my entertainment monitor and stand up, there was a somewhat more panicked announcement on the p.a. system -- a flight attendant, calling for "oxygen canisters and medical personnel" to row 9.
turns out there were several people on board (all in the same small area in the aircraft) who became ill with similar symptoms. two of them were flight attendants, and there was at least one passenger as well (i heard rumors that there were another couple people who were also sick, but i cannot confirm this, as i only tended to the three people i mentioned).
it turned out there were at least eight physicians on the plane, but only me and this other guy (who is a board-certified medical oncologist, but who describes himself as "a terminally differentiated beureaucrat" because he has done only pharmaceutical research work for the last 20-25 years) volunteered to help. fortunately, all of our "patients" responded reasonably well to oxygen and rest, although one of them never got back to baseline and was repeatedly symptomatic every time the oxygen was removed even briefly.
once everyone was somewhat better, one of the other flight attendants came to me a my new terminally differentiated friend and asked, "since they're better, do you think we still need to divert?"
the one "patient" in particular genuinely needed to be evaluated in a manner more sophisticated than we could undertake in an airplane at 36,000 feet, so we agreed, in front of 250 people who our decision was inconvenciencing, that we should indeed divert.
well, for whatever reason, the pilot came on the p.a. shortly after that and announced that we would be landing in shannon, ireland instead of london. once we were on the ground in shannon, they held us in the duty-free area for almost five hours before concluding that even if there was no mechanical issue with the aircraft (which was a concern, since so many people in the same area had developed symptoms), the flight crew couldn't fly us home anymore because of the faa work/rest rules.
i'll skip all the unpleasantries that numerous passengers hurled at the airline & airport representatives about being grounded overnight. suffice it to say that people weren't very understanding. it got ugly for a while.
so they arranged to have us shuttled off to hotels (envoy pax to one, coach to another). dinner (complimentary) was actually very good, and they agreed to allow us each a couple brief international phone calls to update family members about our predicament.
on the whole, i thought that us airways did a very good job handling a difficult situation that day. they really did make the most of a tough situation, and they did it at expediently and efficiently as they could.
the next day, however, started out as one big cluster4uck. they bused all the passengers back to shannon airport 3.5 hours before our scheduled departure time (1455 hours), dropped us all off in front of the check in counter, and then didn't open up our flight for checkin until nearly 90 minutes later. when they did, there was no envoy or preferred checkin line. it was one frenzied mad dash to the checkin counters. the people checking passports and asking the security questions were completely overwhlemed. i personally witnessed three passengers get past the passport/security people without being addressed, and the couple immediately in front of me in "line" spoke only german (remember, we had originally departed from frankfurt). instead of requesting that somebody help her translate, she made several futile attempts at communicating, then said, "ok, i'll just put these on here. you don't look scary." and they didn't -- they were in their 60's and dressed in traditional german clothes. but c'mon!!
we found out after we'd checked in that they had grounded our old a330 (our crew from the day before were going to ferry it back to phl empty later that evening, just in case there was some issue they couldn't detect during their inspection in shannon). instead, they cancelled that day's LGW-PHL flight and had that pilot come over from LGW to SNN in his a330 and take us home (presumably, they rerouted the london pax through CLT and/or PIT).
it turned out that the LGW-PHL flight was supposed to have been our "new" captain's retirement flight. he ferried the a330 LGW-SNN empty -- except for about eight of his family members, who were also onboard. they were all exceptionally nice. when we got onboard, we were surprised to see that they had decorated the plane with banners and streamers, etc. it actually looked kind of festive. even the flight attendants were obviously in a good mood.
i'm not sure why (maybe because the captain's family was there and occupying some seats), but the seat assignments from the day prior didn't carry over. i can't complain too much because my fiancee and i still wound up in row 1, but they couldn't seat us together (we wound up next to each other via trade). but other people travelling together were far less fortunate than we were.
interestingly, it turns out that there's a tradition for pilots who are flying their retirement flight. they bring fire trucks out to the runway and launch streams off water up and over the airplane as it taxis onto the runway (and then also in the arriving airport, the flight is greeted with another similar "water halo" as it exits the runway after slowing down when it has landed. that was really cool to see.
the captain came out several times, greeted a number of passengers, thanked them for flying us airways, and encouraged them to continue flying us airways in the future. a class act, i thought, since this guy was undergoing forced retirement (he turned 60 the next day) shortly after his pension had been whacked by the costcutters in crystal city. he also made a couple poigniant (sp?) amnouncements during our flight about his career and his family. it was very nice. on our arrival, the entire plane applauded, and he came back on the p.a. and thanked us again.
there was a book the captain's family passed around for everybody to sign during the flight, including all the pax onboard. when it got to me, i flipped through it breifly to see what people had said. i was pleasantly surprised to find no nasty comments about missed business meetings, lost baggage (which happened to a couple people whose bags never turned up in SNN for some reason), screwed-up seating assignments, plastic cups, or anything else.
when we arrived in philadelphia, i didn't hear a single negative thing about us airways or the experience of being stuck for an extra day in shannon. the us airways employees who handled our diversion and new "connecting flight" out of shannon, it turned out, did an excellent job making something positive come out of a pretty bad situation.
sorry, for the novel. thought some of you might like to read this.
the flights, incidentally, haven't posted to my account yet. i'm curious to see how they'll post.
-- he who is especially loquacious this morning
[This message has been edited by OverpaidSlacker (edited 10-07-2003).]