UA28, SIN-SFO, 13Jan
Really, really impressed with everyone onboard...
Shortly after take-off man becomes violently ill. Purser calls for a doctor. Doctor volunteers and is able to stabilize him. Later I found out that she quite literally saved his life. Crew ends up doing the dinner service rather than postponing it, though are short-staffed because 1-2 FA's are helping doctor with ill passenger. We divert to HKG, ill passenger disembarks, and then we continue onwards to SFO, arriving 4 hours late.
Overall journey was 19 hours onboard. Obviously major kudos to the doctor onboard! But also major kudos to the SFO-based crew. Purser kept us well-informed and all of the FA's provided fantastic, attentive service in Polaris throughout the entire very, very long flight. They were even extremely apologetic that the service was slightly slower than usual because some colleagues were helping with the ill passenger. Warm service with a smile and regular offers for snacks/refills, etc. continued until one hour outside of SFO.
Two other interesting notes: 1) Seemed that both SIN-SFO flights diverted this past Monday, and 2) even though our delayed arrival was clearly not UA's fault at all, they still offered compensation to everyone onboard (this was done via email afterwards, though the FA's also told the Polaris passengers individually about it during the flight). Part of this might have been because we had an additional maintenance delay in HKG, but that was relatively brief...the large majority of the delayed arrival was the medical diversion.