LAX_Esq

Wife and I flew LIM-LAX on Sunday March 15th on LA 2476.

When the plane parked at the gate at LAX and pax were starting to deplane, a medical emergency developed involving an unconscious Chinese woman. Someone called out for a doctor, and a couple pax came over to help. The woman was lying, unconscious, across the middle set of seats towards the front of the economy cabin. Everyone else proceeded to deplane, except a group of 10-15 Chinese pax stayed back and were huddled around the situation. Paramedics eventually came on board. Attempts to revive her appeared to be unsuccessful, as far as we could see.

We know all of this because, due to crazy luck, my wife's cell phone happened to disappear during the deplaning process. As we were walking up the aisle to deplane, she realized that her phone was gone. We stayed on the plane after everyone (except the medical emergency party) had departed to try to look for the phone, but were eventually told to leave the plane due to the medical situation. We went through immigration and customs, and then upstairs to the LATAM ticket counter. The LATAM folks told us that we could stick around and wait until the plane cleared out and was cleaned/searched.

We hung around for about two hours, and a LATAM agent finally told us the good news -- that the phone was found on board. About 15 minutes later, an agent delivered the phone to us.

When we retrieved the phone, I asked the LATAM reps about the medical situation, due to the obvious Coronavirus concerns. They told me that the medical emergency was still ongoing inside the plane. I asked whether the pax had died and whether the pax had symptoms related to Coronavirus, and was told that they wouldn't discuss that for privacy reasons. I replied that this is a public health issue, and we all ought to know if someone on our flight had died of Coronavirus. Crickets. I tried to contact LATAM on social media to get more information, and, still, nothing.

I realize that plenty of people die on planes and this may have nothing to do with Coronavirus, but the circumstances here make our concern legitimate. Plus, LATAM and Peru appear to have been totally irresponsible in their handling of this pandemic; on Sunday, there were flights departing/arriving from/to Europe, and, also, there was no screening whatsoever when we landed at LIM in transit. Who knows where the unconscious pax (and the group of Chinese pax huddled around her) were coming from and if they were trying to use Peru to avoid US travel bans.

Thanks to LATAM for getting our phone back to us, but everyone on the flight -- and the public at large -- deserves some clarity on whether a pax on board died related to Coronavirus.