Bravo Broomstick.
From the cockpit …
The airline has a contract with an emergency medical advice service. Whenever somebody gets sick, we relay whatever info we can get from the flight attendants, EMTs, doctors, whatever to the folks on the ground. Obviously they weight the info they get differently if it comes from an MD versus from a flight attendant.
Based on what they hear, the MDs there make a recommendation to divert or to continue to destination. They also give us an indication of the urgency.
We have an established list of acceptable airports for the airplane, and the folks on the ground have a list of airports with suitable hospital arrangements. We cross-match the lists & consider weather & whatnot to arrive at a suitable divert destination.
While all this evaluation is going on we’ve warned ATC to prepare for a divert, notified the airline HQ, and kept up our usual thorough job of just flying to the destination.
If we decide (ie the Captain decides, everybody else advises) that a divert is appropriate, we tell ATC & they clear a path to the field. Meanwhile, the medical service calls the relevant hospital, ambulance, and airport to get them moving as well.
For us, the rest of the flight is mostly routine except we’re going to an unexpected airfield, maybe one neither of us have ever seen.
if we’re closer than about 100-120 mile from the airport when the divert begins, we’ve gotta scramble to get everything ready & to descend rapidly enough to get to approach altitude before we get to the airport. Often during the advise & decide phase when it looks likely we’re diverting but are unsure where, we’re setting up 2 or 3 different scenarios so we can pick one & go.
I’ve done a divert from altitude when we where 50 miles from the field & it’s a mighty scramble to stuff 15 minutes of work into 10. We’ve got to always be mindful that we don’t want to hurry up too much and thereby jeopardize everybody’s lives for one person’s probably-non-fatal condition. As I say it, “it’s OK to work quickly, but do not, ever, rush in an airplane.”
We don’t fly any faster than normal. Over the short distances invloved, the minute or two we might gain are immaterial given the time spent in approach, taxi, getting the ambulance crew on board, getting the person off the plane, driving to the hospital, etc.
In almost every divert I’ve ever done or heard about, the person was nearly well by the time we parked.
They tell us the average divert costs $50K. Diverting a 737 somewhere over the States might be more like $30K, while diverting a 747 out over the ocean may well cost $200K.
An interesting problem with an A380 is that with that many folks on board & such long flights they’ll have a medical event of some sort on maybe half the flights. Clearly there’s going to be a push for proceeding to destination and making do with the tools & people on board. There have been industry discussions about hiring RNs or EMTs and training them as FAs, but I don’t see that going too far.
