Korean Air Flight Crew ‘Stood By and Did Nothing’ After Handing Passenger in Medical Distress a Mask Not Attached to Oxygen Tank, Hastening Her Death, Lawsuit Says
A 33-year-old Black woman who collapsed and died aboard a Korean Air flight would have suffered less and might have lived if the flight crew had not failed to connect her oxygen mask to an oxygen tank and provided other critical support, a wrongful death lawsuit claims.
Porscha Tynisha Brown, a safety specialist at the Department of Defense, was traveling with three friends from Washington, D.C., to Seoul on March 29, 2024, when she began having a medical crisis, according to her lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia and obtained by Atlanta Black Star.
Her distress arose 12 hours into the flight and just a few minutes after she told her friend Justin Anoruo that she was feeling well and left her seat to use the lavatory, the complaint says.
He then heard airline personnel make an announcement on the PA asking if there were any medical personnel onboard, and went to the back of the plane, finding Brown sitting on the floor in the aisle, clutching her chest and saying, “I can’t breathe.”
Flight personnel handed an oxygen mask to Brown to place over her face, which she did.
Meanwhile, Brown’s friends and several other passengers rushed over to try to help her, while the Korean Air flight crew “alternated between panicking, observing and taking notes,” the lawsuit says.
Brown soon lost consciousness and became nonresponsive. The flight crew brought out an onboard AED (Automated External Defibrillator) machine and set it on the floor next to her but did not attempt to use it or to assist the passengers who tried to, according to the complaint.
Several times the machine gave the audio command, “Shock advised, shock advised,” but the passengers, who were not trained to use the machine, didn’t know they needed to press the “shock” button to administer a shock to her heart.
The Korean Airline personnel, who presumably were trained on the machine, “stood by and did nothing,” the complaint asserts.
After Brown lost consciousness, the flight crew brought out an onboard medical kit for the first time. Passengers then tried to intravenously administer epinephrine to Brown.
The flight personnel never rendered aid to Brown, tried to take charge of the situation or provide instructions to the volunteering passengers, the lawsuit claims.
Because of the emergency, the airplane eventually made an unscheduled emergency landing in Osaka, Japan.
Only after the flight landed did Anuoro and Brown’s friend Rachel Adger learn that the flight personnel had never plugged the oxygen mask into the oxygen tank.
Thus, despite their frantic attempts to save Brown’s life, she had never received any supplemental oxygen from the tank provided by Korean Air, the lawsuit says.
Brown was deplaned and transported to Rinku General Medical Center in Osaka, where she was pronounced dead on arrival. Her death certificate lists her cause of death as “acute cardiac failure.”
The lawsuit contends that Korean Air has written policies and procedures that its personnel must follow if a passenger presents with a medical issue or emergency while in-flight.
Besides their overall failure to render aid, among the actions its flight personnel allegedly failed to take were: quickly identifying Brown’s symptoms of respiratory distress and providing her with a working oxygen mask plugged into an oxygen tank; timely using the onboard medical kit; quickly identifying her symptoms of cardiac arrest and initiating AED resuscitation; and timely communicating with the flight crew to declare a medical emergency and facilitate a quick diversion of Flight 94 to the nearest possible airport for an emergency landing.
The lawsuit contends that had Korean Air personnel timely and effectively responded to Brown’s medical emergency, she “would not have experienced intense physical and emotional pain before dying at age 33” and “would have in all likelihood survived.”
Korean Air is liable for damage sustained in the case of death or bodily injury of a passenger if the “accident” which caused the death or injury took place on board the aircraft, under international flight rules known as the Montreal Convention, the plaintiffs argue.
The lawsuit defines the alleged acts and omissions of the Korean Air flight personnel as such accidents, and says Brown died as a direct and proximate result of those accidents.
Plaintiff Charles Gormly, as the special administrator of Brown’s estate, demands a jury trial to determine compensatory damages for her wrongful death; pain, distress and agony; past and future economic losses; the medical, transportation and funeral expenses incurred by her mother, a beneficiary; and legal costs.
“What is unusual about this case is that the apparent violations are so bad, it really shocks the conscience how the airline personnel handled this situation,” Daren Nicholson, co-counsel for Brown’s estate, told The Independent, which first reported the lawsuit. “There were some very simple things they should have done that they didn’t do.”
Brown, a Maryland native with a master’s degree from the University of Maryland and plans to pursue a doctorate, worked at Fort Belvoir, a U.S. Army installation in Virginia, as a civilian DOD employee, the complaint says. A workplace safety specialist, Brown received an award of excellence from her garrison commander just four days before her flight to Korea.
“She was at the beginning of her young adulthood, and was a really accomplished and beloved member of her community,” her co-counsel Hannah Crowe told The Independent.
The global incidence of medical emergencies aboard commercial aircraft runs about one every 212 flights, according to a study by a team at the Duke University School of Medicine, The Independent reported. Of those flights, about 8 percent of passengers were taken to the hospital after landing, and 1.7% of the total medical events were so serious they caused the plane to divert. Survival rates in the event of cardiac arrest are far lower than those that occur on the ground, the study found.
“The potential for a very unfortunate outcome is high because flight crews often lack proper training to deal with these types of situations,” attorney Abram Bohrer, who specializes in cases involving airlines but is not involved in Brown’s lawsuit, told The Independent.
A representative for Korean Air said in a statement that the company “will fully respond to and participate in the legal proceeding, but as there is pending litigation, it would be inappropriate for Korean Air to make any further statement.”
The airline has 21 days after being served with the complaint to respond in federal court.