Poor form...
Posted: Fri Feb 25, 2011 9:28 pm
THE head of Jetstar, Bruce Buchanan, has conceded that the budget airline was ''not on our best form'' when it tried to charge a nurse for an extra fare after she had attempted to save the life of a fellow passenger.
Details of the midair incident on the Jetstar flight from Singapore to Adelaide on November 6 emerged yesterday when Mr Buchanan and the chief executive of Qantas, Alan Joyce, appeared at a Senate inquiry in Canberra into aviation safety and pilot training.
Passengers on JQ62 noticed that an elderly man had spent an ''inordinate amount of time'' in the toilet, the independent senator Nick Xenophon told the inquiry. But one of the passengers, who was a nurse, had trouble making a flight attendant aware of the severity of the situation because of communication difficulties.
When the toilet door was finally opened, the man was found slumped over after he had suffered a heart attack.
Senator Xenophon said the attendant did not know how to perform CPR, so the nurse tried to revive the man. The aircraft was diverted to Darwin, but the 86-year-old man was pronounced dead upon arrival.
The nurse had to stay overnight at Royal Darwin Hospital because capillaries in her face broke from the amount of effort she had put into trying to save the passenger's life. Senator Xenophon said the nurse was not happy when Jetstar later tried to charge her for an additional fare.
http://www.smh.com.au/travel/travel-new ... 1b8s3.html