Spirit Flight Passengers Save Man's Life After His Heart Stops
Passengers aboard a Spirit Airlines flight from Detroit to Orlando, Florida, came to the aid of a man who'd stopped breathing before takeoff, saving his life.
The male passenger collapsed on Spirit Flight 801 shortly after 9 a.m. on Tuesday, before the flight was set to take off from Detroit Metro Airport.
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“Somebody just said, ‘Call 911,’ and you never expect to hear that on the plane,” nurse Sue Kneehouse told Click On Detroit.
Kneehouse said the man’s heart stopped beating when he collapsed. “He was in arrhythmia. He was gone and he didn’t have a pulse,” she said.
The quick-thinking nurse grabbed the plane’s defibrillator and got to work alongside fellow passengers to save the man’s life.
Katherine Yombik, another nurse on the flight, told Click On Orlando that she and fellow passenger Jeff Kruger pulled the man from his seat onto the floor. Kruger had taken a CPR class just two weeks earlier.
“Someone picked him up from that side, someone picked him up from the feet, got him from his seat to the ground," Kruger said. "As I went to start compressions there’s an EMT, yelling, who came forward, so my response was to get a defibrillator to the gentleman as quickly as possible.”
Yombik told Click On Orlando that she did CPR on the man for a couple of minutes. The trio then used the defibrillator to get the man’s pulse back.
“Everyone who could help tried to help,” passenger Felipe Capusano said. “Everybody was surreal on how calm it was, actually.”
Kneehouse said, “It was really good—we worked as a team and got it done. It just comes natural to you, and I just gotta say—people just need to keep loving each other.”
Nina Capusano, an 11-year-old passenger from Canada, said, “The defibrillator brought him back and everyone started clapping, and then they brought him out.”
According to Fox News, paramedics arrived and wheeled the man off the plane. He was transported to Metro Detroit Hospital and is reportedly recovering. After a 45-minute delay, the flight continued safely on to Orlando.
"We are so proud of our guests and crew who came together to assist in this urgent situation," Spirit spokesperson Derek Dombrowski said in a statement to Newsweek. "From our flight attendant who recognized the guest was in medical distress, to the selfless guests who stepped in to lend their expertise, we are not only grateful; we are incredibly proud.
"Spirit Airlines recognizes each individual who jumped into action. Our thoughts are now with the guest who needed help. We wish him a speedy and full recovery."