Delta Fares

Why aren't airlines required to track or report medical incidents?

Delta: Body Of Woman, 61, Found In Plane Bathroom ATLANTA - Flight attendants discovered the body of a 61-year-old woman in the restroom of a plane shortly before the flight landed in Atlanta Wednesday morning, a spokeswoman for the airline said. It was unclear how Michaele O'Neil Carnahan died, and how long she was in the restroom. The crew on the Los Angeles-to-Atlanta flight noticed the restroom was occupied on final approach, just before Flight 950 touched down at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport at 5:51 a.m., spokeswoman Keyra Johnson said. Atlanta police were notified and met the plane at the gate, Johnson said. "Delta extends its condolences to the family and commends our flight crew and medical professionals onboard who handled this incident with the utmost professionalism and respect for which they are known," spokeswoman Betsy Talton wrote in an e-mail. The body was taken to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation Crime Lab in suburban Atlanta for an autopsy scheduled for Thursday, said GBI spokesman John Bankhead. Authorities were awaiting the results to determine the cause of death, Bankhead said. Bankhead said Carnahan was on her way from her home in Ventura, Calif., to Florida for a wedding. Atlanta police stationed at the airport respond to calls about dead bodies on airplanes a couple of times a year, said Officer Eric Schwartz, a police spokesman. Talton said the situation was rare, but flight crews are trained to handle "a number of situations on board." Airlines are not required to track or report the medical incidents they handle, so an exact tally of in-flight deaths is hard to determine. MedAire, an Arizona-based company that staffs doctors on the ground to advise flight crews in a medical emergency, counted 89 deaths for the flights they handled in 2006, which represents about one-third of the world's commercial flights. If the death rate is similar for the rest of the flights, annual deaths on airplanes could exceed 260. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080730/ap_on_re_us/delta_body_found;_ylt=AuyhYhcQNCdAadNDXYlEuLgDW7oF

Public Comments

1. Aviation causes of death should be recorded and i am sure this data is available. But not natural causes of death. The incidence would be probably similar to any other data acquired.
2. The death(s) are reported to the NTSB http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/query.asp
3. Because the cause of death is not aviation related. They are required to track accidents and incidents, which are aviation related injuries and deaths. So, the talking head that wrote that article is, as usual, an idiot. Aviation related deaths and injuries are due to things like stupid people who don't wear their seatbelts and then get tossed around the cabin during turbulance. Or an aircraft the runs off the end of the runway and some flight attendant twists her ankle going down the slide. Then there are the obvious deaths when an airliner crashes and kill people in the aircraft and on the ground.
4. Why not require people to track how many times they go to the bathroom each day. That will make it much easier to make an exact tally of how many toilet flushes occur in the United States every year. Why not require everyone to track how many times they open the fridge every day? Why not require everyone to track how many hours they spend watching television? It's easy to want to shift the burden to someone else. But if you want to know how many deaths occur on airplanes, then you should bear the burden of tracking it down and working it out. Why make everybody else do your work?