Careful Where You Cough
Is it fair to kick someone off a flight for coughing?
That's what happened to a Hawaii teenager who was on a class trip to New York. As reported in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Rachel Collier, 16, had a coughing fit when her Continental Airlines flight from Newark was about to take off on Tuesday. "Everyone was looking at me," Rachel was quoted as saying. "I couldn't talk because I lost my voice coughing so much. I was panicking."
The flight attendant gave her water, and a doctor on board said she was okay to fly. But the captain thought otherwise, returned to the gate and dumped Rachel and a teacher off. The two wandered around Manhattan for a couple of hours looking for a hotel room, finally buying toiletries and spending the night in New York. Continental reimbursed their expenses.
What do you think? Was the pilot justified? He said the girl was coughing "uncontrollably" and pointed out that it was a 10-hour flight, much of it above water.
By K.C. Summers |
March 30, 2007; 1:49 PM ET
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Posted by: Emily | March 30, 2007 3:05 PM
My father is a physician, and last year, he was asked on a cross country flight (west to east) to attend to an older passenger in cardiac distress. The plane ended up diverting and landing in Chicago because the passenger needed some pretty immediate attention.
The pilot's concern was mostly about making sure he was able to land at an airport that had long enough runways to accept the bigger plane he was flying and would have decent Emergency services available.
It's not like there's someplace to land over the Atlantic, if it happened again and was more severe. Perhaps the pilot over-reacted, but he did so on the side of caution.
Posted by: Not a Cougher | March 30, 2007 4:37 PM
I think it's pretty silly that the captain ignored the doctor's judgment that she was fine to fly. I get the reasons why, but cmon, it's just a coughing fit. That said, it's very nice of the airline to pay their expenses. They didn't have to do that, and yay for good PR.
Posted by: h3 | April 2, 2007 1:59 PM
I do not understand why the pilot overruled the doctor. Why ask in the first place. And yes, the flight would eventually be over water but not the first 3000 miles.
And I love how it is possible to safely return to the terminal and drop this girl off but yet in a ground stoppage or weather emergency it is impossible, unsafe and out of the question to return to the terminal. As has been demonstrated recently leaving passangers on planes for hours and hours. This seems to be just another example of overreacting and hypocricy on the part of the airlines.
Posted by: Why ask the doc? | April 2, 2007 5:04 PM
The comments to this entry are closed.
It doesn't seem like to me this was malicous intent. I guess he was just concerned about the fact that yes, this flight would be very long and over water for a long time, so if something serious were to happen they would have limited options. On the other hand, I feel sorry for this girl who had to deboard the plane. At least NYC is better than some places you could get stuck. And at least they paid for her expenses.