Southwest denies emergency phone call before take off

Goonie said:
But I'm not quite sure I understand what you're getting at? Should the FA have asked the back Story before letting her make the call?? The point is the planes on the ground, her husband is about to kill himself. That's all that's known and needs to be know. Be a human and do something about it.
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Exactly. All the other stuff is none of anyone's business. I don't care why she was on a "girl's trip," or why she wanted to call him instead of the police, or why he's suicidal in the first place. All I care about is that a human being is desperate to make a phone call to save someone's life, and the only thing standing in the way is an idiotic regulation that everyone knows makes no sense. Let her make the damned call!
 
Perhaps the FA could have done more, but let me play devil's advocate for a second. The woman's story sounds odd:

-The flight attendant "slapped" her phone by the passenger's account. I have never heard of that happening, and I can't imagine it would go over well with other passengers who witnessed it.
-Upon her arriving home officers "dropped to their knees" to inform her that her husband had died. That sounds dramatized.

Also, if she communicated the issue ("my husband is threatening to kill himself") and spent a two hour flight sobbing about a suicidal husband, I can't imagine other passengers not overhearing the problem and taking up her case, ringing the call button, sending an email/Facebook message over the wifi to someone who could help. I could be way off, but her story doesn't seem to add up.
 
Hopefully we don't have the whole story, if we do, I'm shocked by the actions of the F/A presented with the text and obvious hysterics of the passenger which surely couldn't have been a standard, "but I need to make a call" excuse. I do have my doubts for many of the reasons stated already, namely the involvement of other pax or the lack there of.

That being said...

Very, very interesting example of society. Like others have said, if that was me, not sure what my logic would be at that point as far as who to call first, but I'm getting the hell off that plane. But everyone is different, and I'm honestly not one to hesitate to do what I need to do regardless of how it looks to others. I'm sure that many, many people in this country would have such mixed emotions and anxiety in that situation that they would still follow the basic "airplane authority" and submit to the crew. So this does not surprise me at all. Terrible chain of events though, I'm sure even if the cockpit crew didn't have all the details, this had to be hard on them once they found out.

I'd like to think pretty much any crew at Southwest, with a full understanding of the situation of course, would have at the very least let her make some calls, if not return the gate or have the F/As counsel her to dial 911. People go to work to do jobs because they need money to provide for themselves and their families, but they're still people. Being a human means having the compassion to know when to stop being an employee and start being a person. Hopefully there aren't any monsters out there who would feel otherwise.

As far as the suicide, who knows. Maybe she didn't grasp just how far gone he was, it could have seemingly come out of nowhere for her perspective. But with the details at hand, I really have to think he hoped her phone would be on airplane mode already and she wouldn't have a say in stopping him. Likely planned it that way unless the timing was pure coincidence, which I doubt.

Wouldn't want to be that F/A right now.
 
MQAAord said:
That's really great info. I know 911 calls route local, but I guess I had thought it was easier than it is to relay an emergency notification from one area to another. Thank you for sharing that.
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Learned this lesson in college when my phone died and I did not think twice about it. My mother was out of town and could not get in touch with me and thought something bad had happened. (not sure how this all worked in her mind but it did). She was in VA and I was in NC so she called 911, who then had to look up NCs numbers and they transferred her to the NC troopers, who had no info and then had to look up the local police. It was a super long process and I actually called her right after she had heard they had no info on me. Since then I have always added local police (emergency and non emergency) in my phone. Only had to use it once.
 
JPilot9 said:
Perhaps the FA could have done more, but let me play devil's advocate for a second. The woman's story sounds odd:

-The flight attendant "slapped" her phone by the passenger's account. I have never heard of that happening, and I can't imagine it would go over well with other passengers who witnessed it.
-Upon her arriving home officers "dropped to their knees" to inform her that her husband had died. That sounds dramatized.

Also, if she communicated the issue ("my husband is threatening to kill himself") and spent a two hour flight sobbing about a suicidal husband, I can't imagine other passengers not overhearing the problem and taking up her case, ringing the call button, sending an email/Facebook message over the wifi to someone who could help. I could be way off, but her story doesn't seem to add up.
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Exactly.
 
I'm going to go out on a limb and state that he was dead before she left on the "Girls Trip". Her use of drama makes me think she's covering something.

Runincolorado said:
Learned this lesson in college when my phone died and I did not think twice about it. My mother was out of town and could not get in touch with me and thought something bad had happened. (not sure how this all worked in her mind but it did). She was in VA and I was in NC so she called 911, who then had to look up NCs numbers and they transferred her to the NC troopers, who had no info and then had to look up the local police. It was a super long process and I actually called her right after she had heard they had no info on me. Since then I have always added local police (emergency and non emergency) in my phone. Only had to use it once.
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Not necessarily true...almost every dispatch center has the ability to look up ANY U.S. Law Enforcement Agency right there at their desks; then send that agency a message.....takes about 30 seconds from start to the message getting to its' destination.
 
None of us knows what really happened, so everything is simply speculation right now. That being said, I see two things here. There are a lot of people saying what they think the woman should have done without knowing her background, mental state, and most importantly her ability to handle a stressful emergency situation. The other, already pointed out, is that Southwest is keeping mum during a PR nightmare. That simply doesn't happen if a company has anything even remotely approaching a defense worthy of public airing.

That latter point is rather telling to me.
 
somewhereupthere said:
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It's the internet, sweetie.
 
JPilot9 said:
Perhaps the FA could have done more, but let me play devil's advocate for a second. The woman's story sounds odd:

-The flight attendant "slapped" her phone by the passenger's account. I have never heard of that happening, and I can't imagine it would go over well with other passengers who witnessed it.
-Upon her arriving home officers "dropped to their knees" to inform her that her husband had died. That sounds dramatized.

Also, if she communicated the issue ("my husband is threatening to kill himself") and spent a two hour flight sobbing about a suicidal husband, I can't imagine other passengers not overhearing the problem and taking up her case, ringing the call button, sending an email/Facebook message over the wifi to someone who could help. I could be way off, but her story doesn't seem to add up.
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That's why I love to read bad Yelp reviews.

A simple, "I'm sorry ma'am, the chef forgot to include the extra cheese and leave off the onion from your burger, I'll have it prepared again"

turns into

"NO STARS! The waitress indifferently brings me the dish, prepared incorrectly and SMUGLY snatches it away from our plate and STORMS off to the kitchen. I'm pregnant, I need to eat. Did I mention I was pregnant? I will never return".

Admittedly, I sound like a cold-hearted bastard, which I am, but I've had enough friends and family attempt and successfully kill themselves, it kind of "Is what it is" sometimes.
 
JordanD said:
And then a boss/FAA/whoever is on board, sees you, and now you're in trouble for not following policy/regs.
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Look, I'm all for following regulations and policies but eventually you gotta use common sense. You really want to have a debate with a woman who is clearly in distress about policies on cell phone usage when, regardless if she is right or wrong, she believes that making a phone call will save her husband's life? As a controller, if you tell me you're in an emergency and you're going down then you're going down. Yeah, you might get within 4 miles of another guy and separation will be lost but you're not going to collide so I'm not going to be a imbecile and sit there and tell you something stupid like, "You can't do that" like you'll listen to me anyway -- no, you're just going to do what you need to do. I'm probably not going to give you an official clearance but I'll at least just give you advisories as you tell me what you're doing rather than pull out my checklist, "OK, what kind of emergency is this...OK, well in this particular situation, I'm going to have to say "no"..."
 
spades9048 said:
As a controller, if you tell me you're in an emergency and you're going down then you're going down. Yeah, you might get within 4 miles of another guy and separation will be lost but you're not going to collide so I'm not going to be a imbecile and sit there and tell you something stupid like, "You can't do that" like you'll listen to me anyway -- no, you're just going to do what you need to do. I'm probably not going to give you an official clearance but I'll at least just give you advisories as you tell me what you're doing rather than pull out my checklist, "OK, what kind of emergency is this...OK, well in this particular situation, I'm going to have to say "no"..."
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I have been told by ATC to hold at an IAF in the weather during an emergency.....because the 6 other emergencies they were working at the time to sequence to the same single-runway airfield on night/IMC PAR recoveries were all more critical than mine, even though mine was critical enough.

Just goes to show, the scope doesn't come to a screeching halt with aircraft that still need to be worked/sequenced/held/separated, just because I become an emergency. :)
 
Cptnchia said:
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Ha! Well played! I was thinking at the time......hmmm, well, wish the generator had decided to quit the bed 10 minutes ago. Now I have to wait for multiple F-4s and F-5s with low fuel and engines out and a fire light, to head in first. Hack the clock.....because if the second gen decides to go, the battery gives me about 10 mins or so (20 mins with brand new battery), and the jet becomes a flying brick, falling out of the sky to wherever over the South Korean penninsula. :D
 
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MikeD said:
Ha! Well played! I was thinking at the time......hmmm, well, wish the generator had decided to quit the bed 10 minutes ago. Now I have to wait for multiple F-4s and F-5s with low fuel and engines out and a fire light, to head in first. Hack the clock.....because if the second gen decides to go, the battery gives me about 10 mins or so (20 mins with brand new battery), and the jet becomes a flying brick, falling out of the sky to wherever over the South Korean pennunsiula. :D
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Just a regular day in Nam at Da Nang, eh MIkey? :)
 
Got any more of those fun facts or any of that real good sarsaparilla?
 
MikeD said:
That was good stuff we used to get. Went well with the 99 cent Totinos Party Pizzas we lived off of. You remember.....
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I was just explaining how we were regulars at the lunch special at Peter Piper a few weeks ago as well!
 
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