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Airplane food is bad, but is it lethal? American Airlines and the catering company that supplied the food to the airline–Sky Chefs–is being sued by a passenger, claiming that the food on a flight from Barcelona to New York caused food poisoning which later brought on a fatal heart attack.
According to the lawsuit, Raquel and Othon Cortes were on a flight to their home in Miami and had just completed the first leg of their journey, a flight from Barcelona to New York, when dinner was served. Othon chose the chicken, Raquel chose something else, reports NewTimes.
On the ground at JFK it was apparent that something was wrong with Othon. He became pale, had stomach cramps and was suddenly very thirsty, symptoms consistent with food poig, in a typical time-frame.
Raquel told NewTimes that as they boarded the flight from JFK to Miami, her husband’s illness was “expressed and obvious” to AA staff. Boarding anyway, things took a turn for the worse quickly with Othon presenting nausea and shortness of breath which preceded a heart attack. He was pronounced dead in Norfolk, Virginia where the plane made an emergency landing, albeit too late.
Cortes’s lawsuit claims that not only was the chicken poisoned, but that American Airlines shouldn’t have allowed her husband on the connecting flight given his poor health. And she also claims that the airline failed to provide medical attention and waited too long to make the emergency landing.
Cortes is reportedly seeking 1 million dollars in damages.
Read the entire article at Gadling.