Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Woman dies after accident boarding Southwest flight
It was Gaby Assouline’s first time traveling alone, her mother said, a milestone to prove she was an independent 25-year old, despite having a disability.
She was supposed to arrive in Denver, where she would visit her older sister. But she never made it there.
Instead, she was paralyzed from the neck down after an accident while boarding the plane at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. She died two weeks ago, on Jan. 22, after nearly a year in the hospital.
Gaby Assouline had chosen Southwest Airlines because they were supposed to be more accessible for people with disabilities, and called ahead to make sure they could accommodate her, according to her mother, Sandra Assouline.
On the day of her flight in late February 2022, Sandra Assouline got an escort pass and walked her daughter to her gate.
“All she had to do was get from the gate to the door of the plane to her seat,” Assouline said.
She knew they would be texting as soon as her daughter was on board.
But she didn’t hear from her. Somewhere along the jet bridge, Gaby Assouline encountered a “junction” and was “thrown from her wheelchair” and paralyzed from the neck down, according to the civil complaint her family filed against the airline, the wheelchair assistance company, and Broward County, which operates the airport.
Southwest Airlines, G2 Secure Staff, the wheelchair assistance company contracted by Southwest Airlines, and Broward County have all denied liability for damages.
“Southwest offers its sincere condolences to Ms. Assouline’s family, friends and all whose lives she touched,” Chris Perry, a spokesperson for the airline, said in an emailed statement. “We have a more than 51-year commitment to caring for our People and Customers and remain engaged with the parties involved.”
Robert Solomon, the family’s lawyer, described the airline’s wheelchair policies as “antiquated.”
“They owed her the highest duty of care under the law and clearly they failed,” he said.
Sandra Assouline described her daughter as singular-minded, sassy, and “sarcastic to a fault.” She loved crocheting, gardening and watching Bollywood movies.
Over the 11 months that Gaby Assouline was in the hospital, she could no longer speak, so her family learned to understand her when she mouthed jokes, or expressed her sadness and pain.
Ironically, it was during those months in which her daughter couldn’t speak that Sandra Assouline felt she finally saw her effect on others.
“When you look at your own kids, you think they’re amazing, you think everyone sees what you see,” she said. “But you don’t really know how they are until they start interacting in the outside world.”
Solomon said it was unusual how many nurses checked on on Assouline from different parts of the hospital. When she died, he said, four or five nurses came.
Gaby Assouline had used a wheelchair because she had fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva, a genetic bone and tissue disease that makes it hard to walk for long periods of time.
She had become an advocate for others with disabilities, her mother said. When she saw something inaccessible or dangerous at the community college she attended, she would let the school know. She was considering a career in social work and advocacy, maybe even law.
“She hated knowing she could not access a store or a building,” her mother said, “because there was nothing set up for the handicapped, or the thing that was set up was broken.”
The family’s personal injury lawsuit will now become a wrongful death lawsuit.