Ari

I just have to amusingly comment on the generosity of the so-called "most severe category" of assistance that resulted in the $75 ETC from United for the medical response. (Of course it goes without saying that medical professionals respond to onboard medical needs that might arise for the same reason that they became medical professionals in the first place-- not for "compensation" as we call it here on flyertalk).

That said, on an LH flight there was a relatively scary medical incident involving seizure/loss of consciousness/thready pulse-- and not in a a particularly young person-- and in one who didn't speak a language of the FAs. The wife ended up translating to the FAs from some Eastern European language to broken German and the FAs to my mother, the doctor, in English. (Recall I Love Lucy). Thankfully we were like 20 minutes from landing anyway. Other than the fact that the guy tried to swallow his ring and my mother had the pleasure of fishing it out of his mouth without a glove, everything basically went ok and the paramedics took him away after a very quick taxi to a stand where they were waiting. This was like 10-15 years ago and this was intra-Europe on a coach flight connection to-business overseas flight.

I though it was nice that they had their first class ground transport take us from the remote stand to the FCL in MUC even though we weren't in F and let us use the lounge until our departure. Then a $150 AMEX gift cheque came in the mail from Lufthansa customer service USA with a nice than-you note and an offer of 5,000 M&M miles if she wanted to join (she didn't). I guess every carrier and every situation is different; reaching in the mouth without a a glove bothered her and the alcohol in the cocktails in the FCL helped get the Lady Macbeth saliva remints off her hand.

Amusing UA maxes out at $75. (Most would do CPR on Oscar pro bono; CPR on Kirby? "Several pax with stopped hearts ahead of ya-- pay up if you want to skip the waitlist!")

HNLbasedFlyer

Sure. I’ll speculate. Probably not. Probably just communicate to employees if another crew member tested positive. It would be kind of silly to communicate passenger positives given the low risk.

lincolnjkc

I don't know -- a couple years ago I would have said hard "No" -- probably would still say hard no for regular customer service -- but about 2 years ago I had an experience where three UA agents went amazingly above and beyond for my wife and brother/father-in-law* during the their (grand)father's hospitalization-leading-to death. In addition to an informal note I sent to them personally an local management i also sent a letter to "Oscar" and got a fairly generic form-letter-ish response similar to OPs from executive customer care... figured it had disappeared into a void but at least I did my part.

Imagine my surprise when the next time I visited that club there was a framed copy of the letter behind the desk -- it had passed from Oscar's office through a VP, a regional GM, local management, etc. and was presented to those involved in the frame.

Based on that, despite the cold response I wouldn't be surprised if it was passed at least to inflight managment, whether it made it all the way to the FAs or got ignored/forgotten at one of the layers along the way is anyone's guess though.

*- Given that all of those involved took the buy-out ( ) I can say among other things they escorted them from the ticket counter to the UC (despite me, the only member in the group, not being present) and created a quiet corner for them, got my FIL confirmed on an earlier routing so he could get to the hospital faster and spend a bit more time with his father, and on and on. Truly things I wouldn't expect any company to do, and probably did more to solidify my loyalty to UA than anything else, but I digress.