SFist: Good Samaritan at 30,000 Feet

rroseselavy

Tue, 04 Dec 2007 10:00:09 -0800

mpantone, well done in showing your work, but what about registered nurses? Assuming at least one registered nurse per doctor, doesn't Deborah's original argument hold water? (Sorry, I don't have time to look up the number of nurses in America.) There's also the consideration that not all flyers (or is it fliers?) will be American. Factor in the number of international travelers on a Denver to SFO flight and locate the similar percentages of doctors and nurses in the countries of their origin. Then you can take it a step further and ask yourself if doctors and nurses will be over-represented among those who can afford international travel. Or is this getting too complicated already?

mpantone

Mon, 03 Dec 2007 15:29:09 -0800

You don't need to be an aviation nerd; just look at Wikipedia for the specs. The definitive model is the 757-200 and in a two-class configuration, it seats 200 passengers; you were probably on one of those. So even less chance there's a doc onboard. My guess is that you saw "Airplane!" too many times as a kid, so you expected Leslie Nielsen to pop out of business class. :)

Deborah

Mon, 03 Dec 2007 14:38:52 -0800

OMG, I can't believe you people are making me do math. ;) I believe it was a 757, and although I am unsure of that (I'm no aviation nerd), I was in row 35 - the last row. There were six seats in each row. That comes to 210. Subtract some for first class yourself. My brain is tired.

UAL777

Mon, 03 Dec 2007 14:05:43 -0800

UAL.com is showing this flight as being operated on a 737-500 which hold a few more than 100 people. Totally realistic to not have a doctor on that flight.

mariconsoy

Mon, 03 Dec 2007 13:26:47 -0800

I hope they stopped serving Bloody Marys from the cart.

Cement Brunette

Mon, 03 Dec 2007 12:43:06 -0800

The doctors were probably drunk in first class.

Agent510

Mon, 03 Dec 2007 12:32:53 -0800

It always seems like flying is similar to driving, one of those situations where everyone's perenially pissed off and in an "every man for themselves" mode. Sometimes you see air passengers rise above that, though. So, rock on, Kelly!

mpantone

Mon, 03 Dec 2007 12:12:44 -0800

The AMA claims there are 690,000 licensed physicians in the United States (let's say there are 300 million Yanks). That's 0.23% of the population, one doc for every 435 people. The typical transcontinental jetliner holds considerably less than 400 people. Something that might actually fly the DEN-SFO route would be a Boeing 777-200; in a 3-class configuration it seats 305. So yeah, not having a doctor onboard is well within the statistical range.

suckafree

Mon, 03 Dec 2007 11:55:18 -0800

i hope they gave that good samaritan a bottle of bubbly or something comparable. this happened to me several times in one year while flying to europe. someone would always pass out from dehydration and nobody else volunteered to help so i did. simple case of not enough sleep/water or too much booze on a long flight that goes really high in the air. lufthansa gave me the better bottle of champagne. shame on you united. ;)