A former flight attendant who was traveling as a passenger on a Delta Air Lines flight from Paris to Seattle last December says she was left with severe burns after a crew member served her ‘excessively hot’ coffee which she placed on a slanted tray table that then slid off and into her lap.
Shockingly, a lawsuit filed against the Atlanta-based carrier in a Seattle district court last week claims that flight attendants aboard the Airbus A330 aircraft initially dismissed the victim’s concerns and failed to seek independent medical advice.
Cheryl Myers from Washington State, says she suffered ‘horrific’ burn injuries as a result of the flight attendant’s negligence aboard Delta flight DL81 on December 15, 2023, which has left her with ‘severe’ bodily injuries.
As a flight attendant for another airline, Cheryl knows some of the resources available to aircrew to help in a medical emergency, including calling for a off-duty doctor or nurse to help or contacting a ground-based emergency medical service via satellite phone for specialist advice.
Instead, Cheryl says that after the ‘boiling hot’ coffee fell into her lap, the flight attendants she alerted ‘were dismissive and displayed a lack of concern.” Alarmingly, one flight attendant passed Cheryl a bag of ice to incorrectly treat her burn injury.
Cheryl was instructed to change her clothes, and it was only when she showed a flight attendant the severity of her burns while changing clothes in the lavatory that the crew members offered her further assistance.
She was given pain relief and handed a bandage, although the dressing wasn’t designed to be used on burn injuries and it ended up becoming embedded in her wounds.
Cheryl says she was in so much pain that she asked the flight attendants to see if their was an off-duty medical professional onboard who might volunteer to help. To her knowledge, the flight attendants and pilots made no attempt to request assistance from a good samaritan passenger.
Nor did the crew make any attempt to contact a remote medical provider who could have given specialist treatment advice, although the Captain did eventually arrange for paramedics to meet the aircraft on arrival in Seattle.
Paramedics and doctors were surprised at how severe Cheryl’s burn injuries were with medical professionals telling her that they were the worst they had seen caused by hot coffee.
The lawsuit is the latest in a string of similar court cases facing US-based carrier due to burn injuries caused by hot coffee. Last week, it emerged that an American Airlines passenger was suing after she was scalded when an unattended pot of hot coffee fell off a beverage cart and into her lap during turbulence.
Gina Mason was sitting in an aisle seat during a flight from Baltimore to Chicago in February and the flight attendants were in the middle of their beverage service when the Captain made an announcement to warn of turbulence.
The flight attendant allegedly abandoned her beverage cart in the aisle and went to her jumpseat to strap herself in, leaving the coffee pot on top of the cart. As the plane started to shake from the turbulence, the pot of hot coffee tumbled from the cart and into Mason’s lap, causing first and second degree burns.
And in another lawsuit, a passenger is suing Southwest Airlines after she was left ‘weeping in her seat’ when a flight attendant spilled a scalding hot cup of tea in her lap during a flight from Los Angeles to Phoenix last August.
Vestine Uwera is not only suing Southwest for negligence over how the flight attendant served the cup of hot tea but also over the alleged defective design of the cup.
Just like in Cheryl’s case, Uwera claims flight attendants failed to provide her with proper medical care for her ‘severe’ injuries.
Cheryl is suing Delta Air Lines under Article 17 of the Montreal Convention which makes airlines responsible for injuries sustained by passengers during the course of an international flight.
The maximum amount in compensation that can be rewarded is capped at a fluctuating rate of around $170,000.
