COVID-19: Visibly sick people are not kept away from planes

Before boarding a flight from Orlando to Los Angeles, Isaias Hernandez completed a health checklist provided by United Airlines, claiming he had not been diagnosed with COVID-19 and had showed no symptoms of the disease in the previous two weeks.

But during the flight, Angeleno, 69, collapsed. Three passengers gave him CPR for nearly an hour in the aisle of the plane, and the flight was diverted to Louisiana, where Hernandez was pronounced dead. The coroner’s report listed the cause as “acute respiratory failure, COVID-19”.

The incident on December 14 illustrates shortcomings in the systems supposed to prevent people from bringing the coronavirus on commercial flights and potentially spreading it to people crowded around them. And it happened as vacation air travel increased. In the days surrounding Christmas, more than a million passengers boarded almost daily, reaching 1.3 million last Sunday – the most since March.

U.S. airlines boast several layers of protocols designed to protect passengers from the virus, including increased cleaning of aircraft cabins and requiring passengers to wear face coverings except when eating or drinking. Almost all of them also require passengers to complete a health declaration before boarding. But the only repercussion of lying on the statement or refusing to wear a mask on the plane is to be banned from the airline, if caught.

It is impossible to know how often people with COVID-19 planes board.

Federal regulations require airline pilots to report any death or illness aboard interstate and international flights to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and in March, the CDC updated its guidelines reminding pilots of this obligation. But on Thursday, the CDC told The Times it was not keeping track of the pilots’ reports. The US Department of Transportation and the Federal Aviation Administration have said they are also not tracking COVID-19 cases on airplanes.

Flight attendants are advised to be on the lookout for symptoms – coughing, sneezing, high body temperature – but airline officials say they can’t assess every passenger.

Only a few airlines, such as Avianca and Frontier, take each passenger’s temperature before boarding.

Some US airports, including Los Angeles International Airport, are taking the extra step by using thermal cameras to measure people’s temperatures as they enter the terminal, but airmen are allowed to withdraw.

The CDC launched an enhanced screening program last January for international passengers arriving in the United States from some countries with widespread transmission of the virus. But he ended the program in November, concluding that the effort failed, in part because COVID-19 has too many symptoms that are also common to other illnesses; travelers could mask their symptoms to avoid detection; and even travelers without symptoms can still carry and spread the virus.

What is needed, according to passenger rights advocates, flight attendant unions and academics, is for the U.S. Department of Transportation to adopt uniform standards for aviation safety, including an imposed mask warrant heavy fines. They also call on the federal agency to devote more resources to tracing the contacts of known cases and improving access to quick and reliable COVID-19 tests that passengers can perform before a flight.

“Without health safety rules by [the Transportation Department], air travel will continue to spread COVID, ”said Paul Hudson, president of Flyersrights.org, an airline passenger rights group with more than 60,000 members.

The Trump administration has been reluctant to impose screening and security requirements on airlines, preferring to let each carrier and airport create and enforce their own individual policies.

“Unless this message comes from above, it’s really hard to take action,” said Jan L. Jones, professor of hospitality and tourism at the University of New Haven.

The United Airlines flight tragedy on December 14 was just the latest reported incident in which a passenger boarded a plane while showing symptoms of COVID-19 or testing positive for the coronavirus.

In late November, a couple from Hawaii who tested positive for the virus were asked to self-isolate in San Francisco, but instead boarded a plane to Kauai, where they were arrested on suspicion of reckless endangerment, said the police.

Several other incidents involving passengers showing symptoms of COVID-19 on flights have been reported to an aviation safety reporting database operated by NASA. Reports to the database are filed anonymously by pilots and flight attendants, with exact dates and airline names omitted to protect the privacy of informants.

The database was created so that NASA could report safety concerns to manufacturers and aviation operators without exposing employees of those companies to retaliation for reporting the issues.

According to a database report filed in October, the pilot of a commercial flight was alerted to a female passenger who complained of extreme pain while the plane was at cruising altitude. The pilot offered to divert the flight to the nearest airport to get her immediate medical attention, but she said she felt better after an EMT on the flight gave her oxygen.

“As she drew attention to the plane, the passenger said she had been exposed to COVID in the past three days,” the pilot said in the report, which offered few further details .

During a flight in May, a pilot said he was told by a flight attendant that a male passenger was “coughing, sneezing, not wearing a mask, and he refused to wear a mask despite his repeated attempts to give him one ”. The plane had just pulled away from the door, the pilot reported.

Flight attendants also said other passengers were starting to panic because the coughing passenger got up about five times to use the toilet, the pilot wrote.

“In a global pandemic, a visibly ill passenger was able to go through check-in, security, through the terminal, pass an agent at the gate, and get on a plane with … other passengers and … crew members, ”the pilot wrote.

In August, a pilot reported that just before departure, a flight attendant said a passenger was coughing, not wearing a mask, and had just vomited on himself.

“I decided that the person was not suitable for a [long] flight and had to be removed, ”the pilot said in the report.

In other incidents, pilots and flight attendants blame their colleagues and employers.

A pilot reported to the database in September that a flight attendant felt ill but did not disclose his symptoms to the pilot or other crew members. She then tested positive for COVID-19, the pilot said.

“Lack of communication and transparency of [flight attendant] about his pre-existing medical condition led to the compromised safety of passengers and other flight crew members, ”the pilot wrote.

In April, two flight attendants reported that although a passenger on one of their recent flights tested positive for the coronavirus, their airline ordered them to report to work days later.

“The company refused to give us another trip despite being potential carriers,” one of the flight attendants wrote in their report to the NASA database. “We were not given assurance of the landing tests, nor that we would be allowed to be quarantined for the recommended 14 days to allow symptoms to manifest or not.”

But it was the case on last month’s United Airlines flight – with Hernandez collapsing in the sight of other travelers and with attempts to revive him filmed and posted online – that painted the most vivid picture. and the most accessible of the problem.

United Airlines said Hernandez “admitted on our Ready to Fly checklist that he had not been diagnosed with COVID-19 and was not showing symptoms related to COVID.” The airline said it only realized after Hernandez’s death that he had “mistakenly recognized this demand.”

Hernandez suffered from pre-existing health conditions, including high blood pressure and upper respiratory issues, and was feeling ill before the day of travel, the airline said in a statement.

Hernandez collapsed at the start of the flight. At least three medically trained passengers, including Tony Aldapa, an emergency medical technician on leave from Los Angeles, performed CPR on him in the aisle.

Passengers fly over Hernandez’s wife, telling Aldapa that Hernandez had symptoms related to COVID, including loss of taste and smell, according to United Airlines. At least one posted about it on Twitter, prompting hundreds of responses of outrage and panic.

Despite comments from Hernandez’s wife, the plane was not disinfected immediately after Hernandez’s withdrawal and the flight continued to Los Angeles, the airline said.

At the time, the crew believed Hernandez had suffered a heart attack and offered passengers the option to catch a later flight, United Airlines spokesman Charles Hobart said. All of the passengers chose to stay on the plane, he said.

Hobart said the CDC has contacted United Airlines and the carrier has provided the information necessary to notify passengers on the flight that they may have been exposed to the virus.