Some 18 months back I was on a Virgin A340 flight from New Delhi to Heathrow. 1 hour into the flight there was a passenger who had a suspected heart attack. The flight was completely full of pax, the pilot had no hesitation in turning back to New Delhi, we dumped fuel and made an emergency medical landing back at New Delhi. Once on the ground the passenger was conveyed to hospital by ambulance. The crew then had a vote amongst themselves and decided to continue the journey back to Heathrow (They were ultimately going to be working more than their offical hours hence the vote). During this flight I observed a different side to humanity, once we decided to go back to Delhi I was amazed to hear passengers complain to the crew that they were going to miss their theatre shows in London or flight connections or even complain that the duty free trolley wasn’t coming around (God’s honest truth here!).
If I was the pilot it was certainly a no brainer decison to me, life is always paramount, just imagine if it was a member of your family and the pilot decide to continue the 9 hour flight, you would then have grounds to complain if they died!
Anyhow hat’s off to Virgin in this particular incident for making the right humanitarian decision. For those who missed their theatre shows and wanted the flight to continue then I hope you sleep easy at night!
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