Did An Etihad Flight Delay Kill A Passenger?

What a horrific incident. I seriously thinking of cancelling my MUC-AUH flight scheduled for end of Jan.

One interesting point to note is Abu Dhabi has pre clearance which means there are US Customs and Borders folks who clear folks on a US bound flight so they can simply walk off the plane with no customs and immigration when they arrive in the US. So to deplane a US bound plane means they have to be deplaned, all luggage has to be deplaned and checked again as it will not be checked on the US end. Same for immigration. the facilities for Pre Clearance have a smaller capacity than for the general checkin. All of this must play into a reluctance to deboard and reboard a US bound flight.

We were on a same Etihad flight ( EY 183) to San Francisco a day before, so January 2nd. Although there was no fog, the journey was the worst I have ever been on. They ran out of food, gave the wrong food to the wrong person etc. At one point a fight broke out between some passengers and the crew because they requested a vegetarian to eat an omlette for one day!. I believe the problem here is that they run this route with Jet Airways. These guys should be banned from flying into SFO.

I was in plane. The doctor who tried to save him sat next to us when they were waiting for medical assistance at Vienna. He declared the patient medically dead before landing. Passenger had heart operation in 2009.He was coming from holidays and had a back pain. I would say the reason for his death would be too much delay. Etihad crew was newly recruited and not experienced. I wouldnt blame crew but the delay should have been foreseen by airline. Timely decisions could have save the misery, we all went through.

I was on the plane, the passenger was in Coach. We were allowed to move freely around the plane and outside to the end of the bridge just before the tarmac, the business class became the meeting point, people made new friends, many stories from travels everybody had were shared and the situation on board was extremely calm. Some couples had a bit too much of alcohol and did not want to get off in Vienna but after they were convinced to leave the plane they remained calm. All snacks and food from First and Business was shared. The crew warmed food for people who were hungry, there was enough to drink on board, the crew offered water every 20-30 minutes. New catering was delivered but as already mentioned this was causing another massive delay. As well the almost 2 hours it took for one guy to get all the luggage of the leaving crew out of the cargo. What should imho be a change in the procedure is that free business class seats should be made available to elderly passengers. On this flight they were taken by some fit looking folks in their twenties. The last days were already extremely foggy so there should have been more stand by crews instantly available at the airport. I was also confused to see the doctors that helped initially back in their seats, that made no sense to me. But then I thought that there were maybe doctors in First or the front part of Business who were helping. Also, and we only received this information from the passengers behind the elderly couple, the man had already made strange noises for a longer time and after alerting his wife, they were told that he does this often while sleeping and that they should not be concerned. So this might already have been the turning point. On a side note, an elderly man was put into Business on the continuing flight from VIE to DUS yesterday (he was denied entry to the UAE in DXB because of his expired passport) on another flight and he was feeling very weak so 2 doctors entered the plane shortly after boarding on Sunday and after a few minutes they assured that he is good to fly and besides him standing up during take off and landing to get his carry on, everything went fine. But just guess the look on the faces of everybody when the doctors came on board and people started to calculate when the crew might reach their legal limit.