I was in an almost identical situation in 1997. We were flying from John Wayne to Chicago on Christmas Eve, but a storm blew in and shut down ORD.
We were redirected to Milwaukee. We sat on the tarmac for more than 6 hours (this was after 5 hours in the air) waiting for O’Hare to open up again. They ran out of water and the toilets started to overflow. I guess we were lucky in that they didn’t shut down the plane entirely.
Some saintly person in first class started complaining of chest pains. They brought paramedics in on a scissor lift and took him off the plane.
I’m not sure if this is true or not at this point, but we were told that the moment the doors opened the flight was technically over per FAA regulations, since the flight crew had been on the clock for more than 10 hours. Then we were finally taxied over to the terminal and allowed to get off the plane.
The man who had the chest pains checked himself out of the hospital shortly after arriving.
I don’t see how they could possibly claim he was ‘faking’ a heart attack. The situation was incredibly stressful and frustrating, and there are a lot of totally benign conditions that cause the same symptoms as a heart attack, and many of those are triggered by stress.
5hrs, it’s hot no aircon, it’s stressful as heck. Some grey haired man starts claiming he feels seriously unwell, becomes confused, has trouble breathing. They get him off, give him water, calm him, cool him, he recovers. Anything stopping him from thanking them for their assistance and denying further care, if he feels recovered? Is there anything actionable the airline can do to that guy? Besides their task of proving he was faking it, I mean.
Here’s the scene, the above happens to one man. Ten minutes in another man develops similar symptoms. Then another. Then another. (Aren’t they, at some point going to empty the plane? )
It’s not exactly civil disobedience, I know, but five hours, no food, water or air is pretty unreasonable.
The question is would the airline be able to act against the passengers in some way? I suspect maybe refuse to fly them again, but I doubt anyone on that plane will fly that airline again anyway!
He would be billed for the cost of those emergency responders. And they are quite expensive, just like emergency rooms in hospitals. And, since he declined to be taken to the hospital for medical care, his medical insurance company may decline to cover the bill.
It’s not the airline doing it, but could still be a hefty economic cost to the passenger(s) who fake a heart attack.
We’re hearing fewer horror stories like this in America since the U.S. adopted tarmac delay rules (which also cover international flights). Violations (and fining of the guilty airlines) still occur, though.
As far as faking illness to get off the plane - do NOT fake Ebola virus infection, or you and your fellow passengers could be stranded on the jet indefinitely. :eek:
Do you have a cite for them billing people who recover and don’t need further assistance? Or is that an opinion? Or did you mean if he admits he faked it, maybe? What if he isn’t faking? Does he still have to pay?
Why would the insurer prefer to pay for a hospital visit if the patient has recovered himself? That seems counter productive to me. Aren’t you saving them unnecessary costs? US health insurance is a very confusing animal indeed!
I was going to say… it easily could have been a panic attack. I had a short period of time where I suffered from them, and being stuck on a public transportation unexpectedly with no avenue of “escape” would start triggering them. (I was able to control them just enough, though, not to go into full-blown panic mode. Oddly, as long as the vehicle was moving, it was fine, but being stuck in between subway stations would cause my pulse to rise and my head to get a bit cloudy) I have little doubt that if the airplane situation happened during that time period where I was susceptible to them, it would have triggered one.
Billing: You and/or you insurance would absolutely be charged for the EMT service/ambulance ride and for the ER visit and whatever that evaluation cost (EKG, lab tests, medical imaging, etc). If hospitalization was then determined unnecessary and you were not admitted, then of course you would not be billed for that. You would still be looking at a hefty bill for just the ambulance ride.
Penalties: I’m not aware of penalties for this. Mostly, wise policy makers don’t want to discourage people from going to the ER for possible heart conditions. If you hopped off the gurney after being carried off the plane while dancing a jig and singing a song of cheating your way to freedom, I imagine a creative prosecutor or airline official might find some sanction. Just paying your deductible for the ambulance ride and ER visit is steep for many people. If your insurance company could prove you faked the whole thing, I imagine you could be stuck with the whole bill.
BTW- this is really a thing, in that people will ‘exaggerate’ their condition to “line-jump” in emergency rooms. IMHO this really sucks and ought to be punished. But I don’t think there exist good or safe mechanisms to punish this behavior.
This happened in Ottawa, but many Americans were aboard. But what if a Canadian had an espisode? I don’t think you’d see a bill, to be honest. I’m not even 100% certain an American, who recovered before transport to hospital, would see a bill!
And if they didn’t outright admit as much, I’m pretty certain they’d have absolutely no way to ascertain if they were faking it!
(It would make a great plot device for a novel, don’t ya think?)
From the perspective of my 9-1-1 center, yes we would dispatch an ambulance to the airport if a passenger called reporting a medical emergency. Our ambulances routinely enter the secured perimeter in dealing with medical calls so it would be trivially easy to get an ambulance to planeside.
Local policy dictates whether an ambulance charges when the patient is not transported. So a person feigning an illness who then refuses transport might not face a bill from the ambulance service. Or they might get a whopper of a bill. Depends on jurisdiction.
If the passenger was arriving on an international flight and was transported to the hospital there are procedures in place to hold the passenger’s baggage pending Custom’s clearance as well as to clear the passenger through immigration. If the passenger was not transported to the hospital then they can get in line and expect some scrutiny as they clear formalities.