When you soar on a dream holiday at 30,000 feet, the last thing you want to experience is all kinds of emergency. However, in most cases, these situations are out of our control.
According to Del Wilden, a former flight attendant who worked with British Airways for 26 years, and major medical emergency onboard is rare, but they do. In fact, he only experienced two people throughout his entire career as a cabin crew. If this occurs, it must be followed by staff of lesser known protocols here. Wilden revealed.
In the event of a medical emergency, former Purser (senior cabin cruise manager) Wilden said cabin crews would always start by asking passengers if there are medical professionals on board. Ideally, this could be a doctor, nurse or paramedic, but there was another amazing profession that could potentially be sought for assistance.
“We were always told that if the medical professionals didn't move forward, but the vet was ready to move forward and get help, we were allowed to accept it,” he explained to the Metro. “We had to leave them to sign a form of compensation before they could start helping. It is usually guaranteed that we will help urgently only if the situation is very serious.”
They fell into the cabin crew until the medical professionals stepped forward, providing as many first aid assistance as possible. Wilden said the medical training given to flight attendants is much more rigorous than most British people perceived.
“We will act accordingly until the experts move forward. So if it's a heart attack, we'll start CPR right away, but another crew will gather the equipment like a defibrillator or oxygen and someone else will continue to inform you of the situation,” he added.
In addition to being trained in CPR, Wilden said he was also taught how to give birth to a baby. Each plane also came equipped with a unique special medical kit called the M5. Half of the kit was for use by the crew, while the other half was intended for specialized medical use, such as urination and catheters for thrombotic problems.
If there is no medical professional on board the flight to assist, the cabin crew can call a company called Medlink for advice in the event of an onboard medical emergency.
The cabin crew are also trained to deal with both pre-planned, catastrophic emergency situations. The former allows a little more time to deal with it, including the loss of the hydraulic pressure needed to land. In this situation, Dell said there was an “alert call” in the PA system from the captain. They then give the crew a breakdown of the “knit” emergency situation. This represents nature, intention, time, and special instructions. This may include preparing for an emergency landing.
In the event of a catastrophic emergency, such as a crash on an airplane, Wilden said: “If you don't have time to plan what's going on, you have to basically use passengers based on training and find a way to get rid of them from the plane.