I mean, if someone is having a serious medical issue, the plane should land as soon as possible yes. That is the way to not have someone die on the plane. I don’t know how that is complicated.
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What, that landing in Europe would kill everybody else on the plane?
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Your point is ludicrous. If you want it to make sense to anyone else, you’ll at least have to clarify it, because right now it seems like you’re saying potentially getting someone to their dying relative sooner justifies letting another person die who could potentially be saved. If my father were dying I would want to get to his side as soon as possible, but not enough to murder someone else to accomplish it.
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I do understand what you’re saying, but this isn’t the trolley problem. You don’t have one dying old man on one track and a hundred life-or-death critical appointments on the other. You have one dying old man on one track and the vague hypothetical possibility of some life-or-death critical appointments on the other. You can’t have these unknowns outweigh the knowns. That would be ludicrous.
The only thing the pilot knows is that someone’s life is in critical danger.
Now, I think it would be fair to ask “did the pilot know the man was in critical condition?” It sounds like from their dumb checklist and third-party system that AC uses, the pilot did not know.
I think we all agree that we don’t want to divert planes if someone sneezes. I think we all agree that they should divert them if someone is about to die and could be saved. Somewhere in between those two points is a difficult area with choices. Apparently Air Canada had a system. That system failed in this case. They need to have a better system. Preferably one that tilts the scales towards “Trying to save a life even if it might be unnecessary” instead of “Save money by not diverting.”
It’s amazing to me that they did not have a defibrillator on board. Not only might the machine have been able to save him, it could also have better diagnosed that he was in critical condition than the dumb checklist did.
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You don’t understand! It’s a Karen trolley, where there’s one old man dying on one track and a couple hundred people being slightly inconvenienced on the other! /s
They absolutely did. All commercial aircraft are required to have automated external defibrillators (AEDs) on board. The problem is that they can’t automatically diagnose a heart attack. Only a trained clinician can spot the ST-segment elevation that confirms an acute MI. That said, they could have applied the electrodes and run an ECG, grabbed a screenshot, and sent it to a cardiologist in only a few minutes instead of the bullshit gig economy pseudoclinician they talked to.
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Again, my point made: It is easy for us to criticize, armed with detailed information days after the fact. And being the internet, we all want to jump in and have our pound of flesh.
The fact remains that decisions on planes in flight are the ultimate responsibility of the Captain, and no one on this message board knows what information the pilot was appraised of at the time. I would like to believe no one here is making the argument that without better information, and gifted foresight of the outcome, the pilot wouldn’t have made a different decision.
The great thing is, as an aviation incident, it will be dissected, and analyzed, and studied to see what went wrong, and what went right, and then both if and how procedures should be changed for future flights. There is a reason flying is by far the safest way to travel, and in spite of what we all agree is a regrettable incident.
And, as part of that process, it is entirely possible that the pilot will be found to have made an error in judgment, right?
So we have to wait for the results of the inquest and give the pilot total benefit of the doubt until then?
Look, people fuck up all the time. Even pilots. And there’s no reason to assume that the pilot didn’t fuck up…or at least there’s no more reason to assume that than the alternative.
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The pilot didn’t need to magically know the man would die.
He just needs to know that someone was in serious medical distress.
If someone on my plane were vomiting and incontinent, and looking and feeling terrible with no prior medical conditions that explained it I would be cool with delaying my flight. I would not be angry if it wasn’t actually a heart attack in particular but some slightly less dramatic medical emergency.
Edit: I’m not actually blaming the pilot as much as the airline itself if procedure was actually followed but you are insisting it’s all on him. The checklist was bad especially in light of how heart attacks usually present in women in particular. (This was a guy in this case but in general…)
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This “Captain” fucked up and somebody died
He is a fuck-up and he should lose his job
Why are you so worried about random people on the internet hurting his feelings in the mean time?
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Earlier this year, I was on a (US domestic; not Air Canada) flight where that happened…
…and they did, can vouch.
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It looks like the decision was corporate not the pilot’s
Air Canada has well prescribed processes in
place to manage onboard medical events, including soliciting for medical
personnel onboard, and access to a Transport-Canada approved onboard
medical kit. Our crews are further supported by a specialized ground-to-air,
third-party medical provider used by 72 airlines globally that enables the crew to
liaise in real-time with doctors specializing in aviation medicine to evaluate the
passenger and devise a care plan. Based on the advice of medical experts, we
will divert an aircraft to a nearby airport with appropriate medical facilities to
obtain care without hesitation if needed, something we do 40 times a year on
average.
We can confirm that throughout the flight Air Canada’s crew properly followed the
procedures for dealing with onboard medical emergencies and provided
continuous care for the passenger, including relocating him to the business cabin
so he could fully recline. It is important to note that based on careful consultation
with the ground-to-air medical team, diversion was not recommended.
(excerpted email from the Air Canada PR muppet)
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Reading a checklist form doesn’t seem like “careful consultation”. (Although, it should have been enough in this case. 
)
This sounds like a “medical support system” designed by legal departments to firewall liability by deliberately using as low-information a channel as possible.
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The medical company can laugh-off any lawsuits: “We never saw the person, we never talked to anyone who saw the person. We gave best advice based a relayed checklist. In no way was that person our patient.”
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The airline is shielded, because with this system, they’re never going to get definitive (and legally-binding) medical advice like “This is 99% certainty a heart attack. You need to get him to medical care ASAP.” With vague 8-ball results, it’s left to the captain, who’ll have to answer to corporate for putting a plane, crew and passengers off-schedule and out of place.
With a real system, the med company could escalate the call from 1st tier med support to a real doctor, who could talk to crew at the patient, get video, maybe a Fitbit-grade pulse and BP monitor. (There are cheap Bluetooth ECGs, but someone would have to be trained for simple lead-placement.)
“Yeah. Heart attack, get him to medical care, and if he’s not on blood-thinners already, find him an aspirin.”
The real breakthrough needed here is in “legal science”.
The airlines and medical company would need liability-shielding for best-effort remote medical care across international boundaries, but in return, the airlines couldn’t just fluff-off a diagnosis and medical advice to divert.
Air Canada flights have defibrillators. If someone has an apparent cardiac arrest, anyone can grab it and zap (probably) without legal liability. Likewise, people are encouraged to carry and jab an apparent drug OD with Naloxone. Those are possible because of little liability for responsible use. 
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Not even that. The defibrillators on planes (and schools, stadiums, malls, etc.) are automated. They give verbal instructions on how to apply the electrodes then automatically detect and diagnose the patient’s heart rhythm and shock or pace the heart as needed.
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That sounds like really nice work in making them idiot-resistant. (Verbal instructions, is the language selector easy to find? 
)
But the other side of it is that no one has worry about being sued if it fails.
Of course, even if airlines and medical companies were shielded from liability, there’s still the problem of who to bill for the divergence. 
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This is such a tragic outcome. And so unnecessary given the technology available.
But I don’t find my anger at the outcome aimed toward the pilot, who is just another cog in the corporate, capitalist wheel churning us all to dust.
My anger is aimed toward the corporate bigwigs who make and enforce these inhumane policies. They should be held accountable. And I hope they are. 
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