QR 701 DOH-JFK 12/11/18 Medical Emergency
 

On board QR701 DOH-JFK, Nov 12, made a fast descent into YQB, medical emergency, a passenger has had a stroke. No time to make it to terminal gate, surrounded by emergency vehicles on taxi way and the steps are up by the door, taking the passenger off here. Hope and wish the passenger is okay.

Also on this flight. Cannot stress enough how unprofessional QR has been with this matter. They didn't even tell us we were diverting to Quebec until we were beginning our descent, even though a flight attendant called for a doctor on board more than an hour before. After more than an hour of sitting on the ground, they made us deplane while they fixed a technical issue. Then we sat in the terminal for a few hours. They told us that the plane wasn't fit to fly and that we would be spending the night in hotels in Quebec City. All of this was relayed through groundstaff, not a single QR employee could be seen.

They loaded us onto school buses and send us to hotels. Now, nearly five hours after we landed, we're in our hotels with no idea of when or how we will be arriving at JFK. Flight seemed to be full, no word of whether we would be reimbursed for flight change fees for connections. No answers to the simplest of questions, no emails. Just a resounding silence. Shame on QR.

1. The decision to divert is usually a collaborative process that involves a SATCOM link to a medical service on the ground. When they were calling for a doctor an hour before descent most likely the decision to divert wasn't taken yet. Also the workload would be high for both the cabin crew and cockpit crew, don't see any reason why they should worry about making announcements until the decision to divert is made, weather obtained, ATC coordinated with.

2. There would be likely no qualified technical staff for the A350 at YQB and no parts if the aircraft needed that, there is paperwork that needs to be done to allow the technical staff to start working on the aircraft even if there were qualified technical staff on the ground as it is not a normal QR station. At some point the crew would run out of duty hours.

3. Which QR staff were you expecting to handle you at YQB? QR doesn't fly there and it will take a few hours to summon staff up from YUL (if they had them available).

Agree about the email though.

All in all these things happen and at the end of the day what matters is saving the life of the sick passenger and there is only so much that could be done when diverting to an offline station, especially a smaller town.

In the middle of an unscheduled diversion the flight crew have far, far, far better and more critical things to do than keep the passengers updated.

As to 3., I would expect QR cabin crew to relay the news as opposed to some YQB United employee as was the case.

This was a difficult situation as it turned out. I am at one of the hotels where passengers have been put up and managed to glean some information from flight deck crew who are also here and a few doctors who were on the flight that attended to the situation. Cabin crew had made an announcement for medical personnel on board and luckily there were several doctors on board flying to a conference so luckily were able to assess him and figure out what was going on.and determined that he had suffered a severe stroke. Given the gravity of the situation and after consulting with the doctors on board and conferring with QR's Doha base, the pilot decided to make an immediate emergency landing. Montreal would have been the obvious choice given that QR already have staff and a base there, but it would have meant another 30 minutes of flying time which was deemed to be inappropriate so landed relatively quickly in Quebec.

We landed and taxied off the runway and on the taxi way itself came to a stop where stairs were immediately hooked up and an ambulance crew came on board and ultimately took the passenger away. Meanwhile, the plane had developed a fault with the braking system software (something that happened in DOH and caused a delay on departure as well) and a system reset was not able to fix the issue so we were taken to the gate and deboarded after 1 hour into the terminal gate area. Swissport are the local handling agents and were doing their best in an unusual and unprepared situation where they themselves were not given sufficient information about what was going on as that was still being worked out between Flight Deck Crew, Doha base control and Swissport. Turns out as pointed in the previous post above that local A350 mechanics are not available and one is being flown in from BOS to address and fix the problem, and as mentioned, all of this takes time and lots of paperwork.

Under the circumstances, and having seen much, much worse, I think QR and Swissport did a fair job. We were taken to hotels and I received one phone call from QR in Doha, 2 text messages, and a phone call from the hotel staff informing us that our flight will continue onwards tomorrow afternoon. Again, this is an unusual situation, YQB is not a QR destination and this is a sleepy airport anyway, having to deal with nearly 400 passengers show up under these kind of unscripted circumstances is a challenge and while in hindsight things could always have been done better I think QR did a decent job. Let's hope the passenger does make a good recovery and the flight is able to continue to JFK tomorrow.

Standard protocol is that crew are entered into legal crew rest as soon as it is determined that the flight can't continue post-diversion, this was the crew are available to fly as soon as possible. Any time post diversion the crew are busy with any duty delays the start of the rest and hence delays the subsequent flight. Having handled such situations before, for airlines its own operations center usually coordinates everything with the handler and the crew get the information relayed to them later. For smaller ad-hoc operators then the cockpit crew will be much more involved.

Besides the Captain (who probably won't have much information as he/she will be legally non-contactable as to not interrupt their mandated crew rest), the rest of the crew would probably have very little information anyways. The first few hours of an aircraft being grounded at an outstation not much info is available on when the plane can depart until parts and technical crew are located and it is worked out how long it will take to transport them to the diversion airfield.

Just want to add that I understand your frustration, it must be very stressful for you and the other passengers and hopefully the airline does you right later on for re-booking etc. I just wanted to explain from someone who is in the business about some of the things involved in a diversion and that might give you a better understanding of all the moving pieces in a situation like this...

I'm pleased the OP has a sensible and pragmatic approach to what was a pretty horrible situation for at least one passenger and his/her family, and a thankfully rare combination of events for the airline.

It's a shame that the rest of the passengers were inconvenienced, but that's part and parcel of travel. QR and its agents will have rehearsed such situations: procedures were clearly in place. Could communication have been handled better? Most likely it could, but logistics were stretched and for the reasons N1Rotate delineates the situation becomes infernally complicated by legalities, regulations, red-tapes and time-zones.

I get the feeling from the other report on the ground that the scent of compensation might be in the air.

You've said it, they are 'Cabin' crew, responsible for your safety in the 'Cabin'. Anything outside of the 'Cabin' is out of their area of responsibility and pay grade.

'Ground staff' and 'Ground Handling Agents' handles irregular ops and ground matters. Are you suggesting staff should play Chinese whispers and deliver potential misinformation beyond their pay grade?

Funny how the flying public thinks cabin crew can be made do without, but when anything happens it's always 'the cabin crew didn't do this/that/whatever'

We're now taking off at 4PM local time, more than 26 hours after we landed. I'd have to change my connecting flight twice now. What do you think is the best way to go about asking for compensation both for the change fees/hotels and for the time spent?

i reckon the airline would be prepared to pay out of pocket expenses involving hotels, meals, taxis, rebooking of flights, lost deposits on hotel booking, extra car parking charges - things of that nature.

They are very unlikely to consider consequential losses; and in terms of compensation for your inconvenience you could be offered vouchers to set against future fights - or they might simply share regrets at the incident you went through. There is no statutory requirement to compensate you.

Since you're likely not going to be the only one asking, I would MENTION it and see what kind of response. Otherwise, speaking only for myself, I would say nothing for a couple of weeks. QR knows that people are going to be asking. I'd be in wait-and-see mode; there's always plenty of time to make your views known later.

Wow they found hotels for a full A350 so quickly in a smaller city that they don't fly to?

Yeah, business class went to a golf club resort where there's about a foot of snow (not a ton going on here), and economy went to an odd looking little place in a shopping center.

Curious what happens to pax without visas to enter Canada, these flights often have a lot of pax from Asia who would require Canadian visas?

What has your travel insurance said when you asked them?