
How Lufthansa Cares for Passengers' Medical Needs (2014) - Tomte
http://www.airlinereporter.com/2014/09/how-lufthansa-cares-for-passengers-medical-needs/
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imroot
Interesting.

I know that on most Domestic US flights, doctors, nurses, and paramedics are
not permitted to open the medical bag unless their identity (and license) are
confirmed by a flight medical group, and even at that, in situations where
there is no doctor on the flight (but a paramedic or RN is), they will act
upon the authority of a ground based doctor who approves all medication use.

In 2004, I was on a flight from CMH -> SJC and there was a medical emergency.
At the time, I was a licensed paramedic, and pressed my call button when there
was a page for 'medical personnel on the flight' after some delay when nobody
else pressed their button. A flight attendant came up, asked me what my
training was, and went to the front to call somewhere. A few minutes later,
she brought a bag and took me to the back galley and handed me an airphone
with a doctor on the other end, who confirmed with me the proper dosing and
timing of ACLS drugs as we worked together to stabilize a patient. The process
itself was like riding around with a doctor in the back of an ambulance -- he
was very methodical about asking questions and quickly approved medication
within reason at my discretion.

Ultimately, the flight was diverted, the patient was (very quickly) offboarded
from the back galley and after some fuel for the plane, we were back on our
way to SJC.

US Airways gave me a fair amount of miles (50K? 100K? I don't remember the
exact number), upgraded the rest of my flight to first class, and provided me
Platinum status for the rest of the year, along with a few other trinkets/swag
pieces.

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robk
Not always imo. A British doctor was able to provide care on. Jetblue flight
when no one else was available. Of course they can't check British Medical
registration but they were happy nonetheless to allow care to be provided as
no one else was available. No pharmaceuticals were given of course however.

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skyhatch1
Certainly great customer service, but also a very good business decision by
the airline. With an average cost of $100k per diversion, 54 diversions cost
Lufthansa ~$5.4m annually.

With a conservative 40% of urgent cases being treatable under the Doctors on
Board program, that's a $2.16m saving.

Cost of such a program is next to negligible - airlines spend hundreds of $
per flyer per year marketing in various ways to frequent flyers. A €50
discount voucher per flyer certainly won't break the bank.

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fredrikcarno
My friends family got stuck with a very sick child on the other side of the
world and needed to go home. They managed to raise the funds needed amoung
friends and family and used this plane conversion to get safely home. Im very
grateful this can be done and I don't want to think about what could have
happened if it didn't.

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ryan-c
Interesting. I was on a Lufthansa flight last week and they had a call asking
for a doctor/emt/paramedic on the PA, however the flight was not diverted. I'm
not sure what happened. This was on an 11 hour SFO-FRA flight.

~~~
rdl
Same thing happened to me (LH 0455 25 DEC) -- maybe we were on the same
flight?

It was an older passenger about 5 seats across from me in Premium Economy. He
looked to be having some kind of illness, age, or pre existing condition
difficulty, not anything I could deal with (I know trauma care reasonably well
from SF medics and working in a hospital, and some dive medicine stuff, but do
t have any certification beyond first responder stuff), so I didn't do
anything.

I was fairly surprised there were no medical people on the flight. I did
notice some of the flight crew checking in on him periodically, and he seemed
to de-plane normally, wasn't met with an ambulance, etc.

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toddkazakov
They should also start caring about their basic comfort. I am 1.90 and had to
take 12 hour flight with them. The seats were so close to each other so I
could barely walk after the flight after we landed. I believe adding more and
more rows of seats is really absurd.

~~~
superuser2
Everyone says this, and yet everyone buys the cheapest ticket at the most
convenient time. If consumers cared enough to pay more for better seats, they
would have paid extra for the airlines with better seats. They didn't.

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cstejerean
I think a big part of the problem is that it's not obvious which airlines have
better seats. If I run a search on Kayak (or similar) I can easily find the
right combination of price and time that I need. But short of selecting a
higher class it's not clear which of the airlines will have wider seats or
more legroom. There is no way to sort by these criteria. Sure, you could do
some research to figure this out, but most people won't have the time or
knowledge to do that.

If anyone does build a airline shopping site that does offer the ability to
compare flights based on comfort I will gladly start using it exclusively.

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sandworm101
Probably 1/3 of the time I travel from YVR I am put on a plane with a
different tail than the airline I booked through. I pay for "Air Canada to
SFO" but end up getting a United flight. So I've given up trying to figure out
exactly which airline I am flying with.

(I actually really really hate air canada for this. I keep forgetting that I
need to go to the united checkin at SFO, not the Air Canada desk which is 11
billion footsteps away at the other end of everything.)

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cperciva
At least on the case of Air Canada and United, that's code-share flights. If
you book via the Air Canada website it's very very obvious whether you're
taking a real AC plane or not, but third party booking sites tend to hide
that.

In case it helps, the United code-share flights are numbered AC[345]\d\d\d.

~~~
sandworm101
The information is there, although in different placed depending on which
website is used. I just have to remember to check the fine print, at least
when I am the person actually booking the ticket. When i'm not, then I have to
check the boarding docs for the little "operated by" tag. The whole scheme is
not something you expect from a supposedly national airline like AC.

I've also had this happen with Alaska and United.

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xufi
They dont see too bad when I was with them but interestng read

