By Claire Z. Cardona
The Dallas Morning News
DALLAS — The parents of a South Carolina woman who died in April 2016 after having a medical emergency on a Dallas-bound flight has filed a wrongful death suit against American Airlines.
Brittany Oswell was about three hours into the flight from Honolulu to Dallas when she began feeling “dizzy and disoriented” and fainted, according to the suit filed April 18 in a South Carolina district court.
The suit alleges wrongful death and negligence on the part of the airline for, among other allegations, refusing to divert the plane for an emergency landing and for failing to provide proper working equipment and medical supplies on board.
The suit asks for actual and punitive damages in a reasonable amount.
In a statement provided to KXAS-TV (NBC5), American Airlines said it takes “the safety of our passengers very seriously, and we are looking into the details of the complaint.”
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“We were deeply saddened by this event and our thoughts and prayers continue to go out to Mrs. Oswell’s loved ones,” the statement said.
When Oswell began feeling unwell during the flight, her husband paged the flight attendants and a doctor on board examined her. She regained consciousness and was communicating, and the doctor initially believed she was having a panic attack.
Oswell soon began to feel drowsy and nauseous and laid down across the seats, the suit stated.
When the flight was near Albuquerque, she went to the lavatory with her husband and became sick. The doctor tended to her again while a flight attendant grabbed emergency medical supplies.
The suit states the doctor attempted to measure Oswell’s blood pressure, but one cuff was broken and the other registered an error.
The doctor told the flight crew that it needed to divert the plane to the nearest airport and spoke to the captain and the on-call physician for the airline.
“Despite the firsthand observations of the seriousness of Brittany’s conditions,” the captain decided to continue the approximately 90 minutes left to DFW International Airport, the suit alleges.
The doctor continued to try to help Oswell while the plane continued on, but her pulse and breathing stopped. The doctor tried to use the AED, but no shock was administered after three attempts. The doctor and flight attendants took turns trying to resuscitate Oswell.
She never regained consciousness on the flight or after, the suit states.
When the flight landed at DFW Airport on April 15, 2016, medical personnel met the flight and took Oswell to Baylor Medical Center. She remained on life support for three days before the decision was made to take her off of it.
Her cause of death was determined to be acute massive pulmonary embolism and cardiogenic shock, according to the suit.
Tina Starks, Oswell’s mother, told ABC News that the airline should have diverted the flight.
“We absolutely felt like this was not taken very seriously,” she said. “She’s no longer here to do anything with us and it’s all because someone made a business decision to keep flying a plane when she needed emergency medical help that they could not provide because of inadequacies on board the flight.”
Copyright 2018 The Dallas Morning News