This was published 1 year ago
Qantas service: When I passed out on a recent flight, the staff were amazing
The author during his visit to Papua New Guinea.
I'm probably not the first person to have a suspected heart attack over an episode of Euphoria. The highly explicit teen drama, featuring all the drugs, sex and violence that your own teenage years definitely didn't involve (ah, right?), has pearls being clutched and delicate sensibilities offended the world over. Won't someone please think of the children?
Though, my incident is a little more literal. I'm on a Qantas flight from Port Moresby to Brisbane, and we've been stuck on the ground in POM for hours. It's not Qantas's fault, this time: the computer system in the Moresby terminal is down, and no one seems sure how many people we have on board.
Headcounts are being done. Crew are looking concerned. The pilot announces we're waiting on "final paperwork", which as any experienced traveller knows could mean just about anything. Meanwhile I'm sitting by the window and there's a blazing hot sun beating down. I slide my window shade down to get a little relief and a crew member orders me to open it again.
"Those windows are our eyes when we're on the ground," she says. Yeah, righto.
Eventually, after a good hour and a half of just sitting, waiting and wishing, the doors are closed, the plane pushes back and we're taking off. The seatbelt sign goes off. Meals start being handed out.
I'm onto my second episode of Euphoria on the seatback entertainment, and I'm hoping there's no one of delicate constitution sitting directly behind me because damn, there's a lot of genitalia flashing up on my little screen.
But then, suddenly, I'm the one with the delicate constitution.
There's a scene in the first series, episode four I think, that's pretty upsetting to me. I'm a new parent, and visions of children in pain very easily disturb me. And then there's blood, and suddenly I'm light-headed and starry-eyed and the next thing I know there's someone next to me holding out an oxygen mask and a whole lot of people standing around looking concerned.
I blacked out. For a minute or so. I went stiff. My eyes rolled. People weren't sure if I'd had a seizure or not. If it was heart-related or not. If this was the first sign of something major, something imminent. Or not.
And I have to say here: Qantas was amazing. Pretty much flawless. The crew member holding out the oxygen mask was also a nurse: the perfect person to care for you in the air (it helped, too, that I was travelling with another nurse – Emma, if you're reading this, you're a legend.)
I was cared for in the air all the way to Brisbane by crew who were calm, competent and kind. When I arrived in Brisbane I was helped off the flight, whisked through customs and quarantine by Qantas ground staff, offered an ambulance, and then, when I declined, given cab charge vouchers to get to a hospital.
Credit where it's due. Qantas has taken a kicking in recent times, and fair enough too. Its reputation has been trashed, due in part to some terrible decisions the company has made. Band-Aid solutions like $50 travel vouchers for flights with fluid pricing that could all have just gone up by $50 seem fairly laughable.
But if you're going to point out the bad stuff, you should also point out the good stuff. In a time of crisis, for me at least, Qantas handled things brilliantly. I wasn't travelling as a guest of the airline, or in any official capacity. I was just a punter on board, having a bit of an episode.
Fortunately, it wasn't a heart attack, or anything serious or long-lasting. It was a vasovagal syncope – essentially an overly dramatic fainting episode. Your heart rate and blood pressure drop rapidly and you pass out. Common triggers, according to a quick consultation with Dr Google, include stress, dehydration, heat exposure, and the sight of blood.
So, yeah. All of those. Sitting in a stationary plane in the blazing PNG sun for a few hours, and then watching Euphoria.
In hindsight, obviously, the crew might have used a little common sense while we were on the ground and allowed passengers stuck in the sun to lower their blinds. And maybe handed out some water. But that's easy enough to say now.
When things went awry though, Qantas excelled. Its staff excelled. I felt safe. I felt cared for. I felt like I was in good hands. And when you're in an emergency in the air, that's exactly what you need. Even on the ground, I was well looked after.
So, credit where it's due. This could have been the sort of episode that turned me off flying for a long time. Instead I would feel pretty comfortable jumping on a plane tomorrow.
But I probably won't watch Euphoria.
Email: b.groundwater@traveller.com.au
Instagram: instagram.com/bengroundwater
Twitter: twitter.com/bengroundwater
See also: Right now, Australia hates Qantas. But it won't last
See also: Downgrades, cancellations, lost bags: Readers have their say on Qantas
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