Some airline passengers can be deadly boring to sit next to... Another tidbit from Reuters.
A Canadian family has complained to Continental Airlines that they sat next to a critically ill passenger who frothed at the mouth and died during their flight, but the airline said it was only performing a humanitarian mission.
The man, who was not named, died in January while on a five-hour-long flight from Majuro in the Marshall Islands to Honolulu to seek medical treatment, said airline spokesman Dave Messing. "We are the only airline serving the mid-Pacific islands and we have a decades-long tradition of providing a vital lifeline to Hawaii for islanders who need either routine or emergency medical treatment," he said Tuesday. "Dozens if not hundreds of lives have been saved."
Messing said the airline tries to give ill passengers their privacy, but could not in this case because the Boeing 737 flight was virtually full. Donna Beaulieu, her daughter and son-in-law, on their way home to Campbell River, British Columbia after vacationing in Bali, looked on in horror when the dying man was wheeled on to the plane and into the seat next to them. He was unconscious and hooked up to IV's and oxygen.
"We looked at each other and said 'This guy isn't going to make it,"' she told the Houston Chronicle. She said he stopped breathing several times, but was roused by flight attendants and stayed alive until finally he frothed at the mouth and died.
So what did they want the airline to do? Prop him up in the galley? Sheesh!