American Airlines Teen Death Tests The “Flight Attendants Are There For Safety” Claim

Airlines say flight attendants are primarily there for your safety (not service). A federal appeals court just put that claim to the test, at least for international flights.

A fourteen year old child was flying American Airlines from San Pedro Sula, Honduras to Miami with his family, continuing on to New York. He went into cardiac arrest and lost consciousness.

His family yelled for help. And, according to their lawsuit, crew members delayed responding, delayed moving him from his window seat to an area where aid could be given, delayed asking for medical professionals onboard, and delayed using the aircraft’s automated external defibrillator. They didn’t follow procedure, and the boy died.

Ultimately, two medically trained passengers came back to help. CPR was performed. The defibrillator was brought out, but the suit says flight attendants struggled with how to use it and that when the machine appeared to prepare for a shock, no shock was delivered. Instead, it kept advising CPR. The flight diverted to Cancun, but the child passed away.

According to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit,

• The crew response didn’t matter for liability
  
• All that does is whether the FAA-required AED device onboard actually worked

The crew’s response to a medical emergency does not amount to an “accident” under the Montreal Convention, the treaty governing injuries and deaths on international flights. Alleged violations of American’s procedures doesn’t change that, despite claims that:

• Crew was slow to respond, to transfer the child to the back of the aircraft where aid could be rendered, to immediately notify the flight deck and contact the on-call physician, to promptly request medically trained passengers, and to begin CPR immediately.
  
• They didn’t promptly initiate AED resuscitation, did not effectively use the AED, and struggled to even turn on and operate the AED.

The Fifth Circuit accepted that the beginning of the incident was chaotic. Carts blocked the aisle, one flight attendant had to climb over a cart, and a medical volunteer later saw “a lot of commotion” and “nothing was really being done.” But the crew met a minimum standard for response (the child was moved to the galley, crew got help from got help from medically trained passengers, got the AED and assisted with CPR, alerted the captain).

This isn’t a negligence case – it’s governed by the Montreal Convention, and liability here requires an “accident” which is an unexpected or unusual event external to the passenger. A crew response that is imperfect, confused, delayed, or inconsistent with an airline manual isn’t an accident. Even if crew performance should have been better, that’s not an airline-caused unexpected or unusal external event. That would require “willing inaction.”

The lawsuit alleged insufficient training but all flight attendants had completed the required annual AED training whether or not they retained anything. Mishandling an onboard emergency doesn’t create airline liability.

What remains of the case is whether American Airlines had a functional defibrillator, as legally required.

• American says the AED worked. The device recorded a shock eight minutes after activation, and American’s expert said there was no evidence the machine was faulty.
  
• Four witnesses, including a doctor and a nurse who helped treat Greenidge, testified that the child received no shock.

The Fifth Circuit said this is a factual matter for a jury, that American can’t defeat witness testimony about a possibly malfunctioning AED by pointing to data generated by the machine that’s alleged to have malfunctioned.

American will argue that the AED’s internal record is more reliable than witnesses watching a chaotic resuscitation in an airplane galley, and that even if something went wrong with the device a working one might not have saved the passenger.

However, there’s a simple story for a jury that a child suffered cardiac arrest, federal rules required lifesaving equipment, multiple witnesses say the equipment failed and the boy died.

Beyond the facts of this case, the court’s ruling supports the obviously correct conclusion that flight attendants are not doctors, and the standard of emergency response they’re expected to provide isn’t hospital grade. They receive some training, but they aren’t medical professionals. That’s one aspect of safety, and of course another is emergency evacuation. Earlier this month Frontier Airlines passengers ignored admonitions of cabin crew to leave their bags behind for safety during an evacuation.

Flight attendants are safety professionals, but on an international flight there’s some sense in which courts treat that as a paperwork exercise. There’s greater scrutiny of the required onboard devices than the people put there to use them.