peeples
New Member
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- Nov 16, 2010
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That's the thing that gets me.. they GOT her there. why couldn't they get her home??
They planned to come home Oct. 15 so Vilma could resume treatment with the doctors she had been seeing for years.
...
Her illness, a combination of kidney disease and diabetes, caused her to gain water weight, and the airline said it didn’t have a seat-belt extender for her, Janos said.
Neither trusted the doctors in Hungary, especially because they wouldn’t be familiar with her lengthy medical history, Janos said.
“She was very ill and did not trust that the hospitals in former communist Hungary could attend to her needs,” Ronai said.
THREE different airlines sold this woman a ticket and told her they could fly her back to the States (including KLM, which got her to Europe in the first place). THREE different airlines changed their minds after the woman was already on one of their planes.
In the meantime, the woman and her husband drove all over Central Europe.
I'm all for personal responsibility and, yes, I think the couple should have stayed at home in the U.S. But the passenger and her husband had no way of telepathically analyzing the wheelchair capacity at the Prague Airport. They HAD to rely on airline officials and those officials share some of the responsibility.
But why are the airlines responsible for her demise? After all, it appears she was very sickly. The airlines didn't get her from point A to point B. That doesn't make them responsible for her ending up dead due to her health issues.
I am betting they reserved their flights online or by phone, well in advance of the day of the flight. Airline reservation agents on the other end of a phone line have NO way of assessing a person's fitness and safety to travel. A computer has even LESS means.
In all the reservations I've made over my many years, I have NEVER been asked about my health status and medical record, either on the phone or on a computer. :what:
I believe it is fair to say that no human was ABLE to make an accurate assessment until these people were at the gate. And since this was a very LONG overseas flight with no place whatsoever to make an emergency landing in the event of a medical emergency, I believe the airline made the best decision that could be made.
I can't believe this is even an issue. There is no way an airline should have to accomodate this person's issues in the first place, much less be responsible for what happens to her when they don't.