dead Nihonjin found in the restroom brings lawsuit

[Bucky]

Lawsuit: dead passenger found in toilet


An airline passenger died in the restroom during a flight and wasn't found until the cleaning crew boarded the plane after it landed, a federal lawsuit contends.

The passenger, Taisuke Matsuo, 66, apparently had a heart attack on an American Airlines flight from Tokyo to Chicago during the first leg of a trip home to Indianapolis, according to the lawsuit filed Monday by his wife, Carolyn D. Watts.

The lawsuit accuses American Airlines of negligence and seeks damages of about $150,000.

After the plane landed at Chicago O'Hare International Airport on April 13, 2005, passengers and flight crew disembarked and the jet was taken to another gate for cleaning. Workers then discovered the bathroom was locked from the inside and found Matsuo's body - about two hours after the jet landed.

Tim Smith, a spokesman for American Airlines in Fort Worth, Texas, said the company does not comment on pending litigation.

[amdg]

Carolyn D. Watts needs to understand that people sometimes die in strange places.

[AssKissinger]

Like it's their fault this guy shit himself to death.

[Kuang_Grade]

They're probably thinking of working the suit along the lines that the bathrooms should have been checked prior to landing and/or if he occupied it for a really long time during the flight, someone should have noticed and checked. I believe some planes have have warning lights on the bathrooms that indicate when they have been locked for really long time. It is likely the suit isn't being filed because he died, its that he may have been in need of assistance and they didn't notice and BECAUSE of that, he died....although not that there's is a ton of stuff they can much to do for a heart attack victim in flight

[Tsuru]

One more reason not to fly American: the toilets do not get cleaned enroute.
Proper airlines get the cabin crew to give the restrooms a quick once-over once or twice on long flights, for obvious reasons.

Personally I've never heard of a warning light that goes on when someone falls asleep or dies in the toilet or something. The only warning systems that toilets have as far as I know are smoke detectors. In the latest Boeing 777 however, with so much automation going on on the flightdeck, they have an alarm bell that goes off when no activity by the pilots has been detected for 15 minutes straight, to prevent them from falling asleep at the same time. (Yes, they are in fact allowed power naps, just not at the same time)

[Kuang_Grade]

In the latest Boeing 777 however, with so much automation going on on the flightdeck, they have an alarm bell that goes off when no activity by the pilots has been detected for 15 minutes straight, to prevent them from falling asleep at the same time.

Good thing they set it for such a short period of time, since it certainly takes more than 15 minutes for trouble to become serious on a commercial jet:p , although I imagine if they set the time interval too short, pilots would think of some way to defeat it.

As for the bathroom alarm, I don't know it for a fact but I was on a 777 to Japan and I noticed that a stewardess was knocking on a toilet door and specifically was asking if everything was alright and stating the toilet had been occupied for a while. After an apparent "I'm OK", the stewardess reached up above the toilet door and flicked some sort of switch and then left. It is possible the person merely activated the help button in the toilet by mistake but the fact that stewardess said that it had been locked for a while gave me pause to think there might be some sort of light that goes off in the galley when the door is locked for more than X minutes.

[emperor]

...there might be some sort of light that goes off in the galley when the door is locked for more than X minutes.

[font="Century Gothic"]yeah, maybe they could have a time-indexed-terror-alert-colour-coded type system[/font]
[font="Tahoma"][color="Green"]Vacant[/color]
[color="Red"]Occupied[/color]
[color="DarkOrange"]Assembling Bomb and/or Inflating Sextoy[/color]
[color="Purple"]Spanking It[/color]
[color="Navy"]Dead[/color][/font]

[TFG]

Yeah, he was lucky.
All those dead geezers on the Yamanote line going round and round till a pickpocket finds them and relieves them of the burden of their wallets. loL:o

[Tsuru]

Good thing they set it for such a short period of time, since it certainly takes more than 15 minutes for trouble to become serious on a commercial jet:p , although I imagine if they set the time interval too short, pilots would think of some way to defeat it.

Don't forget anything that can go wrong also has it's own alarm bell, loud enough to wake even myself up. The problem is maintaining radio contact with air traffic control. A while back a Vietnam Airlines 777 crossed into Russia on its way to Paris without contacting ATC because the pilots were both asleep. Funny thing is that the cabin crew could not do anything, even with Russian interceptors on the wings because the cockpit door has to be opened from the inside. Flight ended up being diverted to Moscow and the pilots got a righteous bollocking

As for the bathroom alarm, I don't know it for a fact but I was on a 777 to Japan and I noticed that a stewardess was knocking on a toilet door and specifically was asking if everything was alright and stating the toilet had been occupied for a while. After an apparent "I'm OK", the stewardess reached up above the toilet door and flicked some sort of switch and then left. It is possible the person merely activated the help button in the toilet by mistake but the fact that stewardess said that it had been locked for a while gave me pause to think there might be some sort of light that goes off in the galley when the door is locked for more than X minutes.

It could be, I don't know. I don't follow cabin restroom technology that closely

[FG Lurker]

Don't forget anything that can go wrong also has it's own alarm bell, loud enough to wake even myself up. The problem is maintaining radio contact with air traffic control. A while back a Vietnam Airlines 777 crossed into Russia on its way to Paris without contacting ATC because the pilots were both asleep.

I used to do some consulting work for Vietnam Airlines... Nice people but they wanted to earn Japan-level amounts of money while spending Vietnam-level amounts...