Southwest Airlines refused to help disabled Oregon passenger to restroom for hours...
 

This sort of stuff makes me never want to fly Southwest Airlines again. What's wrong with these people, leaving a customer like this? If this is true, I hope these employees get fired.

https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2019/05/southwest-airlines-attendants-refused-to-help-disabled-passenger-to-restroom-for-hours-during-flight-from-pdx-to-st-louis-suit-alleges.html

What part about the "citing turbulence" did you miss?

It's unfortunate, but providing a passenger assist when the professional judgment is that it's unsafe means it's unsafe.

Feel free to dump WN and fly AA, DL, or UA. You won't find it handled any differently.

Did I miss something? When did airline employees become personal assistants or nurses?

If this woman was so helpless she had no business traveling without an attendant. WN should have refused her boarding.

Oh puhleeze.

Hope you enjoy flying Allegiant and Spirit.

This is just laughable. What a joke. Fake news! :mad:

The Oregonian actually reported that the FA's could not help as the result of turbulence. It is OP who missed that.

The most alarming part of this thread?

Anyone that immediately blames Southwest, even with the basic information provided.

People up in arms over events that happen and threats to never use company ____ every again are getting really old.

There may be more to the story. Heck, even what we have read makes a common person wonder what really happened here and why a lawsuit.

It sounds like the passenger really needed a caregiver to travel with her. Since she didn't have that, she was relying on a Southwest employee to go above and beyond for her. Apparently nobody did that, and the result was unfortunate, but no individual employee should be at fault here.

Since when are airline responsible to provide hospice care?

Reasonable accommodations is ALL that is required.

This definitely seems more like a failing on Huntleigh staff - I don't know what their responsibility beyond getting the passenger to the gate is, but common sense says that a minimum they should have notified a WN employee when they left the person at the gate instead of telling them a WN employee would help them - it was clearly an unmanned gate at that time....

Are you sure you understand what "hospice care" is? ;)

One word of advice for Katherine E. Muenchow: Depends.

I didn't realize WN aircraft were the same as assisted living facilities. Why didn't the woman have personal responsibility and have a family member/caregiver travel with her?

Completely agree, but apparently that did not happen. They took responsibility for her and then just left her. Turbulence? Maybe, maybe not.

I'd certainly like to hear both sides, but Southwest obviously stepped up and failed. Doesn't look good at all.