Court: Southwest Airlines immune in passenger death

SAN FRANCISCO >> A California appeals court ruled that Southwest Airlines is immune from liability in the 2014 death of a passenger whose medical crisis in an airplane lavatory was mistakenly thought by the crew to be a security threat.

The ruling Wednesday affirmed the decision of a trial court judge who limited the evidence heard by a jury in a lawsuit brought by the passenger's family.

The ruling by a threejudge panel of the 1st Appellate District was first reported by the Bay Area News Group.

The lawsuit against Southwest and the flight crew claimed that Rich Ilczyszyn, 46, of Newport Beach died because the crew failed to help him.

Ilczyszyn, a prominent financial trader, suffered a massive pulmonary embolism during the last 10 minutes of a California flight from Oakland to Orange County on Sept. 19, 2014, while he was locked in the lavatory.

According to trial records, flight attendants heard sounds like “grunting, growling (and) crying” but Ilczyszyn did not comply with requests to open the door and the crew could not push the door in because his foot was pressed against it.

The crew declared a lockdown and requested that law enforcement officers meet the plane upon landing. The other passengers were let off the plane before sheriff's deputies broke into the lavatory and found Ilczyszyn without a pulse.

He was resuscitated but had suffered brain damage and died in a hospital the next day. An autopsy report said the cause of death was pulmonary thromboembolism due to deep venous thrombosis — blood clots.