Human HEART left on board a Southwest plane forces pilot to turnaround mid-flight after stewards realized they forgot to offload the organ
- The Seattle-Dallas flight had almost made it over Idaho when it turned around
- Stewards realized they had forgotten to offload a heart destined for a hospital
- It had been flown commercially with Southwest from Sacramento to Seattle
- Hearts for transplantation are not flown commercially (unlike kidneys)
- But hearts intended for research, or individual valves for transplant, can be
A commercial flight from Seattle to Dallas was forced to turn back after stewards realized a human heart had not been offloaded for clinical use.
Southwest Airlines was tasked with flying the heart from Sacramento to Washington, where an unidentified hospital was awaiting the organ.
But the team forgot to unload it – and simply prepared the plane for its next flight to Dallas.
It wasn’t until they had flown over Idaho and were nearing Wyoming that the team realized.
Immediately they turned around, explaining the situation to passengers over the speakers.
Southwest Airlines was tasked with flying the heart from Sacramento to Washington, where an unidentified hospital was awaiting the organ. But the team forgot to unload it (file image)
Dr Andrew Gottschalk, a New Orleans sports doctor who was on the flight, told the Seattle Times that there was a ripple of panic before most passengers accepted that getting a heart to its destination was more important.
But he said he, like others on board, felt it was a ‘horrific story of gross negligence.’
‘The heart in question traveled from California, to Washington, to the other side of Idaho, and back to Washington,’ he said.
Hearts and lungs destined for transplant are not typically transported in commercial flights, since there is a four- to six-hour window allowed between removing the organ and transplanting it.
Kidneys are often shipped commercially, since they have a preservation time of 24 to 36 hours. Generally they are not accompanied.
But according to Joel Newman, assistant communications director at the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), the only way a heart would ever be transported on a commercial flight would be for research, or if they were merely using some tissue or valves.
‘Hearts and lungs have the shortest preservation time,’ Newman told DailyMail.com.
‘So if a human heart were intended for transplantation it would be very unlikely to be traveling over a great distance. Either ground transportation or a charter plane would be more likely.’
If the heart is being used whole it cannot be frozen; it is kept in a container with sterile layers and biological matter to keep it fresh.
If it’s destined for research, though, it can be frozen. ‘You can recover heart valves or skin or bone or corneas, and they could be kept for a longer period of time,’ Newman explained.
As for who’s in charge of a commercially-flown organ: it flies solo.
Newman explains that there is typically someone mandated to get the organ to the airport where it is passed through the security x-rays (with care not to open the layers of the sterile packaging) and put on the flight.
But from then it’s unaccompanied, in the hands of the stewards, until they get to the other end. The only exception would be if it requires a special device with it, in which case a technician would be on board.
It’s not clear who was in charge of the heart flying on Southwest, and who was mandated to pick it up at the other end.
Every Seattle hospital denied being part of this scenario.
Katherine Pliska, spokeswoman for LifeCenter Northwest, the top organization for organ procurement in the Northwest, also denied involvement.
Pliska told the Seattle Times: ‘We only use private flights. There’s a time limit to get where it needs to go.’
Southwest Airlines spokesman Dan Landson told the Times: ‘Nothing is more important to us than the safety of our customers and the safe delivery of the precious cargo we transport every day.’