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Miscellaneous See other Miscellaneous Articles Title: Airline food blamed in death of Miami man Did contaminated airline food cause a passenger's death? Airline food is notoriously unappetizing. But can it kill? That's the claim in a suit recently filed by the wife and daughter of the late Othon Cortes against American Airlines and the contractor that prepared his inflight meal. The two plaintiffs allege that Cortes died after eating a meal on a transatlantic American flight. In their lawsuit against the airline and Sky Chefs--a German company subcontracted to prepare food on American Airlines flights--the Corteses allege that the meal served on Cortes' flight between Barcelona, Spain and New York was contaminated with bacteria. The Cortes family's suit, filed in a Miami district court, accuses American and Sky Chefs of "failing to properly maintain or prepare the food" and alleges that the companies allowed the food to become contaminated with the Clostridium perfringens bacteria. CNN reports that the perfringens bacteria transmits one of the most commonly reported foodborne illnesses in the United States, but is rarely fatal. A few deaths are reported each year as a result of dehydration and other complications associated with food poisoning. After his flight landed at John F. Kennedy International Airport, Cortes, 73, began to feel "discomfort and pain that included sharp stomach cramps and sudden thirst and other clear outward manifestation of severe physical illness," the suit alleges. Once he'd boarded his connecting flight to Miami, Cortes experienced nausea and shortness of breath and suffered a cardiac event that left him unresponsive. The plane made an emergency landing in Norfolk, Va., but Cortes was pronounced dead on arrival. LSG Sky Chefs, the German company that makes airlines meals for more than 300 airlines, has petitioned to get the suit dismissed. "Based upon the allegations in the complaint it is not possible that Sky Chefs is the responsible party because we did not cater the Barcelona flight in question," said spokeswoman Josefine Corsten. An unusual part of the lawsuit alleges that American Airlines was at fault for allowing Cortes to board the second leg of his flight, since he was in a compromised state. As the Department of Transportation told MSNBC, it's far more common for aggrieved airline passengers to lodge complaints for the opposite reason: "We're not aware of receiving any complaints regarding passengers whom the airlines should have denied boarding due to illness but who nevertheless were allowed to fly," DOT spokesman Bill Mosley told MSNBC. Instead, he said, the agency typically hears from passengers who are trying to board a plane, but are then prevented from doing so. From 4,000+ comments: Concerned Citizen Did anyone else on the flight become ill? If not, then why was his the only meal that was contaminated? For all we really know, he got sick from something he ate or drank BEFORE he got on the plane in the first place. Sound to me like he didn't have much life insurance, if any at all, and the wife and daughter just want to get some cash out of his death. Hina Medeiros Ok...First off, no one gets food poisoning and dies within the time it takes to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. Elderly people who die from food poisoning is usually secondary to DEHYDRATION from nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. In addition, if he died from a "cardiac event" leaving him unresponsive, his death was more likely to the fact that he was having a heart attack...not that he had food poisoning. Classic symptoms for Heart attack...Stomach pain/discomfort, nausea, SOB, feeling of overall illness. This is just another case of people tying to get a check for something completely absurd. JUST LIFE........ • Sacramento He was 73 yrs old sounds like age not the food and where were the other places did he eat before he got or the air plane did he have any med problems mmm? sounds like a reveiw of his doctor reports could tell alot also as we age we have medical problems ..... Did he wash his hands before he ate after touching god only no's how much before boarding the plane and how many people passed threw where he went and touched before him .ALWAYS WASH YOUR HANDS REALLY GOOD ,I WASH MINE ALWAYS,CLEAN,CLEAN.. Leon • Babylon I believe that an autopsy had to be done to show the cause of death and the contents of the remains inside the stomach so it would prove: what was eaten, and how he died. So if the family filed a lawsuit I am sure it was proven that it was food poisioning, and the food he ate was from the flight before filing the lawsuit. No one would be stupid enough to assume and just go filing lawsuits, and a lawyer would not take a case against a large company unless they knew they had somem leverage. So I beleive the family has a point and a case. It's all resting on the science of this case as evidence. sardine; it's all stressful to the point of being mentally and physically damaging and dangerous to all passengers' health. don't forget the pesticides they constantly bug-bomb the planes with for international flights. a plane is in part a large, flying restaurant, with kitchens the size of tiny bathrooms, and just about as sanitary. everyone who is running to the defense of the airlines needs to stop and think about how badly they abuse us unless we have the money to fly first class or even business class, and most whiteknightUSMC • Chico long international flights are enough to harm or even kill a lot of people soon after all the stress the airlines put you through. the cheap seats, the cheap food, questionable water, low oxygen content in the re-circulated air, high altitude radiation, but mostly the sore glutes and upper legs and entire body soreness from being treated like a canned people absolutely do not. please think about adding fuel to the fire of the airlines that treat us like cattle. please be careful about defending them, when it is entirely possible that they could have significantly contributed to this man's death. they exploit the living daylights out of all of us already. Sounds like an abdominal aorta aneurysm breaking. This suit will never fit. Tough luck. earl Hey #$%$ it wasn't. If you are a doctor, than you should be sued for malpractice, but being from Buffalo, you are just likely a typical dumb small town know it all that doesn;t know squat. You cannot even file this type of lawsuit unless you have an expert witness to testify. This would require a toxicologist with autopsy and other hard medical evidence. You are an idiot. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
#1. To: Tatarewicz (#0)
(Edited)
Although I have always doubted whatever the airlines served as food, I wonder also about the airport food. Airport restaurants and taco stands put absolutely no value on their culinary reputations but only on their location, comforted in the knowledge that airline anti-terrorist precautions mean that passengers must wait extra long times before boarding, during which they can sell their mediocre cuisine, further secure in the knowledge that those customers may never come back to complain. In this particular case, considering the timing, I doubt he got poisoned on, or just before, a flight from Madrid. It takes longer than that for food poisoning to really get its claws in. More like a meal at least 6 hours, perhaps as much as 12 hours, before his flight. On the whole, the symptoms seem more consistent with a major infection than with food poisoning. Since this guy suffered a heart attack during the last flight, I wonder about DVT (Deep Vein Thrombosis) - this is a genuine and dangerous medical condition attributable to be strapped into those confining airline seats for hours at a time. It's a genuine ailment with potentially fatal dangers. The discomfort that arises from the preliminary stages might explain some bizarre passenger behavior in occasional news reports. This guy was already impaired so there is a definite possibility there. The airlines know of the risks of DVT and have been pretty indifferent about it (avoidance would practically involve getting all the passengers to stand up and so some exercises every hour or so).
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