It may not be quite so easy to "just turn around and land..".
<and so on>
I agree - although for a 14 hour flight to LHR, it's rather odd that they didn't decide to divert. How far would that 388 have to go under normal flight course before it had burnt enough fuel to land safely (assume it does not dump fuel). I mean, we've heard of a QF flight LHR-SIN diverting to DXB for a medical emergency (or was it somewhere else along the way and
then divert to DXB due to fuel and crew).
The article is sketchy on many fronts (apart from a slew of grammatical errors). For example, they say that "it
appeared [the affected] was attended to by a passenger who was a doctor". Well, thank goodness they had a doctor on board, but it only
appeared to be the case?
Next, the article seemed to imply that the affected pax requested the diversion in order to seek medical attention. If he was suffering a drastic heart attack, I'm sure the crew would find some way of getting him to the ground as quickly as possible rather than fly all the way to LHR,
without his being able to physically blurt out, "Get me to a hospital! Divert!" If he was able to say such a thing then perhaps the condition was not as serious. Still, it is amazing that he survived the entire flight, although SQ's defence is not that "[he] survived, so what's the problem".
Of course, both statements said above were provided by the BBC. That's only one side.
I would assume also that all FAs (or a sizable portion of the crew) are First Aid trained and, along with the doctor, should've been able to stabilise the affected pax and then make a learned judgement whether a diversion was necessary. Now there's a lot embodied in that last statement, so it only takes one thing wrong in any of that to break the chain and thus things go wrong. Can someone of medical competence (perhaps in cardiovascular) comment on whether a diversion would have prevented "long term heart damage" as quoted in the article. Not that the article may be incorrect (i.e. there is no long term damage), but rather what would've been the difference between seeking a diversion and attention vs. the 14 hour flight?
In fact, the way I read it, had the affected pax's condition been as serious as described, I would not have expected him to survive the 14 hour flight. In which case had he died then I would strongly support a case of negligence to be brought against SQ.
On a more personal note, I am flying SIN-FRA in 2 weeks time in F on a SQ 744. Whilst I have no previous cardiovascular medical history (except a line starting from my mum of diabetes, which I don't have as yet), I'm hoping that I don't have a heart attack, especially closely after take-off from SIN! (Well, not just because SQ may expect me to survive until we reach FRA, but it isn't good for the ticker anyway....)
So it'd be a hard case - even with all the "classic" symptoms, it's still far more likely to be any number of other things (reflux, anxiety, any lung thing etc).
