Air passenger dies, officials in blame game

CHENNAI:  A 53-year-old passenger who landed in Chennai on Sunday died at the airport. While some officials claim that medical assistance was not renedered to the passenger in time, airport authorities maintain that the passenger was declared dead on arrival.Jai Sheikh Hussain, a Bangladeshi national, came on the Jet Airways flight from Kolkata accompanied by his brother. The pilot had declared a priority landing owing to the medical emergency and when the flight landed at 6.30pm, Sheikh Hussain was attended by an airport doctor who declared that he was already dead. Officials at the airport said that Sheikh Hussain could perhaps have been saved had the airport doctor arrived on time which didn’t happen. “We were told that in spite of the pilot’s paging in earlier, the doctor was not available on landing. He arrived only 10 minutes later. In such situations every minute counts,” a police constable said. On their part, the airport authority officials maintained that the doctor was made available and that the passenger was already dead on board. “The mistake could be blamed on the pilot also for he didn’t declare the pan-pan medical emergency as it should have been done. He just sought a priority landing,” an AAI official revealed.Medical facilities at the airport have been under the scanner for a long time now. Airline officials have brought the AAI’s attention to the ill-equipped ambulance and the absence of qualified paramedics who could unload a passenger on a stretcher on board to ground. “Disembarking a sick passenger is not an easy job as the stretcher has to be shifted to the ambu lift and then to the ambulance. We have been doing this with the help of our loaders so far who will not be able to empthazise with the passenger’s criticality. Moreoever, the life-saving equipment that should be present in any ambulance is missing in the airport ambulance,” an airline official said. Airport officials also revealed that unloading the passenger’s body took several hours as the airport ambulance was not available. “Airport ambulance is available to carry only sick passengers as per procedure. Bodies have to follow another procedure where in the police are called to register an FIR and the corpse is taken for an autopsy vehicle which has to be arranged by the cops,” an airport manager defended.AAI and Apollo Hospitals recently tied up to offer medical services at the airport under which they are now operating a fully equipped ambulance with paramedic. “This facility, however, has a long way to go as it was not brought to our attention that such a facility is being made available at the airport,” an airline official lamented.