Before boarding a flight from Orlando to Los Angeles, Isaias Hernandez filled out a health checklist provided by United Airlines, stating that he had not been diagnosed with COVID-19 and had not shown any symptoms of the disease in the previous two weeks.
But during the flight, Angeleno, 69, passed out. Three passengers gave him cardiopulmonary resuscitation for almost an hour in the plane’s aisle, and the flight was diverted to Louisiana, where Hernandez was pronounced dead. The coroner’s report listed the cause as “acute respiratory failure, COVID-19”.
The December 14 incident illustrates deficiencies in systems that aim to prevent people from bringing the coronavirus on board commercial flights and potentially spreading it to people huddled around them. And that happened when air travel on vacation increased. In the days surrounding Christmas, more than one million passengers boarded airplanes almost daily, reaching 1.3 million last Sunday – the maximum since March.
US airlines have a number of protocols designed to protect passengers from the virus, including increasing the cleanliness of aircraft cabins and requiring passengers to wear facial covers, except when eating or drinking. Almost all of them also require passengers to complete a health declaration before boarding. But the only repercussion for lying in the statement or refusing to wear a mask on the plane is to be banned from the airline if caught.
How often people with COVID-19 planes are impossible to know.
Federal regulations require airline pilots to report to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention any deaths or illnesses on interstate and international flights, and in March, the CDC updated its guidelines reminding pilots of this duty. But on Thursday, the CDC told The Times that it does not follow the pilots’ reports. The United States Department of Transportation and the Federal Aviation Administration said they also do not monitor cases of COVID-19 on planes.
Flight attendants must be on the lookout for symptoms – coughing, sneezing, elevated body temperature – but airline representatives say they cannot assess all passengers.
Only a few airlines, such as Avianca and Frontier, measure the temperature of each passenger before boarding.
An Avianca employee at Los Angeles International Airport takes the temperature of traveler Eva Zapata before a flight in November.
(Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)
Some US airports, including Los Angeles International Airport, take it a step further by using thermal cameras to measure people’s temperature when they enter the terminal, but passengers can choose to leave.
The CDC launched an improved screening program last January for international passengers arriving in the United States from certain countries with widespread transmission of the virus. But the program ended in November, concluding that the effort failed, in part because COVID-19 has many symptoms that are also common to other diseases; travelers can mask their symptoms to avoid detection; and even travelers without symptoms can carry and spread the virus.
What is needed, say passenger rights advocates, flight attendants unions and academics, is for the United States Department of Transportation to adopt uniform standards for airline safety, including a mask mandate that is enforced with fines. tall. They also ask the federal agency to put more resources into tracking contact from known cases and improve access to fast and reliable COVID-19 tests that passengers can take before a flight.
“Without health safety rules for [the Transportation Department], air travel will continue to spread COVID, ”said Paul Hudson, president of Flyersrights.org, an airline passenger rights group with more than 60,000 members.
The Trump administration has been reluctant to impose airline screening and security requirements, opting instead to let each operator and airport create and apply its own individual policies.
“Unless the message comes from above, it is really difficult to act,” said Jan L. Jones, professor of hospitality and tourism at the University of New Haven.
The tragedy on the United Airlines flight on December 14 was just the last reported incident in which a passenger boarded a plane despite showing symptoms of COVID-19 or a positive coronavirus test.
In late November, a couple from Hawaii who tested positive for the virus were told to isolate themselves in San Francisco, but instead boarded a plane to Kauai, where they were arrested on suspicion of danger, police said.
Several other incidents involving passengers who showed COVID-19 symptoms on flights have been reported to a database of aviation safety reports operated by NASA. The database reports are filed anonymously by pilots and flight attendants, with exact dates and airline names withheld to protect informants’ privacy.
The database was created so that NASA can report safety issues to aviation manufacturers and operators, without putting employees of those companies at risk of reprisal for flagging the problems.
According to a database report filed in October, the pilot of a commercial flight was alerted to a passenger who complained of extreme pain while the plane was at cruising altitude. The pilot offered to divert the flight to the nearest airport for immediate medical attention, but she said she was feeling better after a flight paramedic gave her oxygen.
“While receiving attention on the plane, the passenger stated that she had been exposed to COVID in the past three days,” said the pilot in the report, which offered few other details.
On a flight in May, a pilot reported being notified by a flight attendant that a male passenger was “coughing, sneezing, without wearing a mask and refused to wear a mask, despite her repeated attempts to give him a “. The plane had just left the gate, the pilot reported.
Flight attendants also said other passengers were starting to panic because the coughing passenger had gotten up about five times to use the bathroom, the pilot wrote.
“During a global pandemic, a visibly ill passenger was able to pass through check-in, security, walk through the terminal, go through a gate agent and board a plane with… other passengers and… crew members,” the pilot wrote.
In August, a pilot reported that, just before departure, a flight attendant said a passenger was coughing, did not wear a mask and had just vomited on himself.
“I made the decision that the person was not suitable for a [long] flight and should be removed, ”said the pilot in the report.
In other incidents, pilots and flight attendants blame their colleagues and employers.
A pilot reported to the database in September that a flight attendant was feeling unwell, but did not reveal her symptoms to the pilot or other crew members. She later tested positive for COVID-19, said the pilot.
“Lack of communication and transparency on the part of [flight attendant] about his pre-existing health condition, he compromised the safety of passengers and flight crew ”, wrote the pilot.
In April, two flight attendants reported that while a passenger on one of their recent flights tested positive for the coronavirus, their airline ordered them to attend the service a few days later.
“The company refused to give us an alternative trip, even though we are potential carriers,” wrote one of the flight attendants in his report in NASA’s database. “We were not given a guarantee of testing on landing, or that we would be quarantined for all the recommended 14 days to allow symptoms to manifest or not.”
But it is the case of the United Airlines flight last month – with Hernandez collapsing in front of other travelers and attempts to revive him, captured on video and posted online – that painted the most vivid and accessible picture of the problem.
United Airlines said Hernandez “acknowledged on our Ready to Fly checklist that he had not been diagnosed with COVID-19 and had no symptoms related to COVID.” The airline said it only realized after Hernandez’s death that he “mistakenly acknowledged this requirement”.
Hernandez had pre-existing health problems, including hypertension and upper respiratory problems, and was feeling ill before the day of the trip, the airline said in a statement.
Hernandez passed out at the beginning of the flight. At least three medical-trained passengers, including Tony Aldapa, an out-of-service Los Angeles emergency medical technician, performed CPR on him in the hall.
Passengers on top of Hernandez’s wife telling Aldapa that Hernandez had symptoms related to COVID, including loss of taste and smell, according to United Airlines. At least one posted about it on Twitter, generating hundreds of responses of outrage and panic.
Despite comments from Hernandez’s wife, the plane was not disinfected immediately after Hernandez was removed, and the flight continued to Los Angeles, the airline said.
At the time, the crew believed that Hernandez suffered a heart attack and offered passengers the option of boarding a later flight, said United Airlines spokesman Charles Hobart. All passengers chose to stay on the plane, he said.
Hobart said the CDC contacted United Airlines and that the carrier provided the information necessary to notify passengers on the flight that they may have been exposed to the virus.