Shanu Pande says she had been looking forward to the trip for years — a flight that would bring her father to Canada from India after he finally obtained permanent residency status.
But the September trip took a sharp turn when Harish Pant, 83, developed severe medical symptoms: chest pain, back pain, vomiting, loss of bowel control and the inability to stand up.
“He was deteriorating in front of my eyes,” said Pande, who was accompanying her father.
Flight AC051 had left Delhi shortly after midnight local time. When Pant’s symptoms started seven hours later, it was over Europe. Pande says she pleaded with the cabin crew to divert the plane and land in order to get her father to a hospital.
Instead, the flight stayed on course for nine more hours, travelling over Ireland, across the Atlantic Ocean and Eastern Canada before touching ground in Montreal. Paramedics were waiting — but Pant died as they worked on him.
“I was very hysterical,” said Pande. “My mind was gone at this point.”
Her father was officially pronounced dead at a Montreal hospital from a “presumed infarction” — dead heart tissue.
Two months later, Pande says the piercing grief has given way to anger.
“He was at the mercy of the pilot and Air Canada people,” she told Go Public. “They were inhumane and callous.”
Family questions why Air Canada didn’t divert flight during medical emergency | Go Public
Featured VideoAn Ontario woman is demanding answers from Air Canada after her father had a medical emergency during a flight, but the plane wasn’t diverted. Instead, the flight continued for another nine hours and he died shortly after landing.
Air Canada declined an on-camera interview request.
In an email to Go Public, spokesperson Peter Fitzpatrick wrote that Air Canada extends its deepest sympathies to Pant’s family, but also “categorically rejects any assertions that it was responsible for the customer’s death.”
The airline’s crew “properly followed the procedures” for dealing with onboard medical emergencies, wrote Fitzpatrick. When asked, he declined to explain the procedures.
Harish Pant waits with family member Saroj Pande at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport before their flight to Montreal on Sept. 10. (Submitted by Shanu Pande)
Fitzpatrick also said reports from the crew differed “in several important respects” from that of his family, regarding the timing of events and how the situation was handled.
Trying to figure out how often in-flight medical emergencies occur on Canadian flights — and what determines whether an airline will divert a plane — can be like flying through thick fog without radar.
No consensus exists among airlines regarding what defines an in-flight emergency. There is no mandatory reporting when a plane diverts for a medical emergency, nor any requirement to make public why decisions to reroute are made.
“There’s too many people keeping information close to their chests,” said Dr. Shahbaz Syed, an emergency physician at Ottawa Hospital and senior editor of a blog and podcast for the University of Ottawa’s department of emergency medicine.
“The data we have available to us is quite limited.”
Experts say in-flight medical emergencies are expected to increase as airline passenger traffic rebounds from the pandemic, long-haul flights become more common and the passenger population ages. Airlines don’t share the cost of diverting a plane, though an article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal said the price tag could climb to almost $900,000. Today, that stat appears to be almost three decades old.
Harish Pant sits with his daughter, Pande, at a train station in Delhi in 2014. (Submitted by Shanu Pande)
‘I’m having severe chest pain’
Pande says, as part of getting his permanent residency, her father had been deemed to be in good health just a few months earlier. He was in good spirits before he, Pande and her mother-in-law boarded the plane at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport.
Seven hours later, Pant jolted awake, says his daughter.
“He’s saying, ‘I’m having severe chest pain,'” Pande recounted, demonstrating how her father was clutching his chest over his heart.
Pande says she immediately rushed to get the attention of crew members. When they came back to his seat, Pande says Pant’s face had drooped on one side, he had lost control of his bowels and felt extremely weak.
Retired cardiologist Dr. Vicki Bernstein says Pant was experiencing a ‘major medical emergency’ and she’s surprised Air Canada didn’t divert the plane. (Erica Johnson/CBC)
As they took him to the washroom in a wheelchair, Pande asked the chief flight attendant to reroute the plane to a nearby city so Pant could get medical attention.
When they emerged from the washroom 40 minutes later, there was still no decision to divert.
Pant and his daughter were moved to business class so he could lay flat.
‘Not life-threatening’
Fitzpatrick says the crew made “repeated pages” for a passenger with medical training to come forward — but no one did.
Pande says a crew member only made those announcements after her mother-in-law insisted.
Meanwhile, the pilot was speaking with Phoenix-based MedAire, a third-party medical provider used by over 180 airlines, according to the company.
Fitzpatrick says MedAire lets the crew to talk with doctors familiar with the challenges of practising medicine on a plane “to evaluate the passenger and devise a care plan.”
Pande sits with her father’s suitcase, still full of his belongings. ‘That’s the only thing that is left of him,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to lose that.’ (Cole Burston/CBC)
Go Public has learned that in the case of an in-flight medical emergency on Air Canada, the chief flight attendant fills out a checklist that is given to the pilot, who then discusses the case with a MedAire physician.
The airline would not tell Go Public what the checklist said in Pant’s case. His daughter says she doesn’t remember seeing anyone fill out a form about her father.
Once the plane was over Ireland — the last possible stop before the Atlantic Ocean — Pande says she again urgently asked the crew to change course. Her father now had severe back ache and was throwing up.
She was told the plane would continue to Montreal because Pant’s condition was deemed “not life-threatening.”
“I was shocked,” said Pande. “I said, ‘Why are you not diverting the plane? Do you see his condition?'”
Pande says she became frantic. She asked to speak with the pilot herself, but was denied.
Grieving daughter voices dismay to Air Canada flight crew
Featured VideoShanu Pande’s father died after suffering for hours on a long-haul flight. She describes her interaction with the Air Canada flight crew after the flight landed.
Go Public asked Air Canada how the decision to stay on course was made.
Fitzpatrick, the spokesperson, said he was unable to provide that information. He said the crew “provided continuous care,” including offering him Aspirin. But Pande says her father was allergic, so she gave him a dose of her mother-in-law’s Sorbitrate — a drug used to manage severe chest pain.
Fitzpatrick said when medical experts recommend an aircraft be diverted, Air Canada will do so “without hesitation” and that diversions happen approximately 40 times a year. This year, the airline will operate about 178,000 flights.
MedAire spokesperson Chris Potter said he couldn’t comment on the case due to client privacy reasons. In a statement to Go Public, Potter wrote that his company handles 60,000 in-flight emergencies globally each year and that of those cases, fewer than two per cent result in a diversion.
Air Canada says it ‘categorically rejects any assertions that it was responsible for the customer’s death.’ (Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press)
Major emergency
Go Public contacted five physicians — two family doctors, two emergency room physicians and a cardiologist.
All five said Pant’s symptoms indicated a serious cardiac event.
“This is a major medical emergency,” said Vancouver cardiologist Dr. Vicki Bernstein, who practised for 40 years before retiring two years ago. “I can’t believe that [MedAire] wouldn’t have suggested that they divert.”
The others also said they would have suggested a diversion.
“It’s very important to get them [to a hospital] as quickly as possible,” said Bernstein. “Open the chest, stop the bleeding or whatever is happening.”
Pande says she understands her father might still not have survived if he had gotten earlier medical attention on the ground, but says he was robbed of that chance.
‘I should have banged on the cockpit’
Pande says once the decision had been made that the flight would not be diverted, she was pretty much left alone to care for her dad.
Syed, a doctor who’s been pressed into service on a plane, said it’s critical to keep passengers apprised of what decisions are being made in the cockpit, and why.
“If I have a heart attack or something on a plane, I do want to know how the information is being given to the pilot,” said Syed. “You can’t really keep someone in the dark as it pertains to their own health.”
In the weeks since Pant’s death, Pande’s husband has penned emails to his MP and to Minister of Transport Pablo Rodriguez, describing what happened and calling for the resignation of several top airline employees.
Pande says she, too, wants to fight for justice — and is also fighting regret.
“I should have banged on the cockpit,” she said. “Why did he have to suffer like that?”
The family is pursuing a lawsuit against Air Canada.
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Netflix on Thursday reported that its subscriber growth slowed dramatically during the summer, a sign the huge gains from the video-streaming service’s crackdown on freeloading viewers is tapering off.
The 5.1 million subscribers that Netflix added during the July-September period represented a 42% decline from the total gained during the same time last year. Even so, the company’s revenue and profit rose at a faster pace than analysts had projected, according to FactSet Research.
Netflix ended September with 282.7 million worldwide subscribers — far more than any other streaming service.
The Los Gatos, California, company earned $2.36 billion, or $5.40 per share, a 41% increase from the same time last year. Revenue climbed 15% from a year ago to $9.82 billion. Netflix management predicted the company’s revenue will rise at the same 15% year-over-year pace during the October-December period, slightly than better than analysts have been expecting.
The strong financial performance in the past quarter coupled with the upbeat forecast eclipsed any worries about slowing subscriber growth. Netflix’s stock price surged nearly 4% in extended trading after the numbers came out, building upon a more than 40% increase in the company’s shares so far this year.
The past quarter’s subscriber gains were the lowest posted in any three-month period since the beginning of last year. That drop-off indicates Netflix is shifting to a new phase after reaping the benefits from a ban on the once-rampant practice of sharing account passwords that enabled an estimated 100 million people watch its popular service without paying for it.
The crackdown, triggered by a rare loss of subscribers coming out of the pandemic in 2022, helped Netflix add 57 million subscribers from June 2022 through this June — an average of more than 7 million per quarter, while many of its industry rivals have been struggling as households curbed their discretionary spending.
Netflix’s gains also were propelled by a low-priced version of its service that included commercials for the first time in its history. The company still is only getting a small fraction of its revenue from the 2-year-old advertising push, but Netflix is intensifying its focus on that segment of its business to help boost its profits.
In a letter to shareholder, Netflix reiterated previous cautionary notes about its expansion into advertising, though the low-priced option including commercials has become its fastest growing segment.
“We have much more work to do improving our offering for advertisers, which will be a priority over the next few years,” Netflix management wrote in the letter.
As part of its evolution, Netflix has been increasingly supplementing its lineup of scripted TV series and movies with live programming, such as a Labor Day spectacle featuring renowned glutton Joey Chestnut setting a world record for gorging on hot dogs in a showdown with his longtime nemesis Takeru Kobayashi.
Netflix will be trying to attract more viewer during the current quarter with a Nov. 15 fight pitting former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson against Jake Paul, a YouTube sensation turned boxer, and two National Football League games on Christmas Day.
REGINA – Saskatchewan’s provincial election is on Oct. 28. Here’s a look at some of the campaign promises made by the two major parties:
Saskatchewan Party
— Continue withholding federal carbon levy payments to Ottawa on natural gas until the end of 2025.
— Reduce personal income tax rates over four years; a family of four would save $3,400.
— Double the Active Families Benefit to $300 per child per year and the benefit for children with disabilities to $400 a year.
— Direct all school divisions to ban “biological boys” from girls’ change rooms in schools.
— Increase the First-Time Homebuyers Tax Credit to $15,000 from $10,000.
— Reintroduce the Home Renovation Tax Credit, allowing homeowners to claim up to $4,000 in renovation costs on their income taxes; seniors could claim up to $5,000.
— Extend coverage for insulin pumps and diabetes supplies to seniors and young adults
— Provide a 50 per cent refundable tax credit — up to $10,000 — to help cover the cost of a first fertility treatment.
— Hire 100 new municipal officers and 70 more officers with the Saskatchewan Marshals Service.
— Amend legislation to provide police with more authority to address intoxication, vandalism and disturbances on public property.
— Platform cost of $1.2 billion, with deficits in the first three years and a small surplus in 2027.
—
NDP
— Pause the 15-cent-a-litre gas tax for six months, saving an average family about $350.
— Remove the provincial sales tax from children’s clothes and ready-to-eat grocery items like rotisserie chickens and granola bars.
— Pass legislation to limit how often and how much landlords can raise rent.
— Repeal the law that requires parental consent when children under 16 want to change their names or pronouns at school.
— Launch a provincewide school nutrition program.
— Build more schools and reduce classroom sizes.
— Hire 800 front-line health-care workers in areas most in need.
— Launch an accountability commission to investigate cost overruns for government projects.
— Scrap the marshals service.
— Hire 100 Mounties and expand detox services.
— Platform cost of $3.5 billion, with small deficits in the first three years and a small surplus in the fourth year.
—
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct .17, 2024.
VANCOUVER – More than a million British Columbians have already cast their provincial election ballots, smashing the advance voting record ahead of what weather forecasters say will be a rain-drenched election day in much of B.C., with snow also predicted for the north.
Elections BC said Thursday that 1,001,331 people had cast ballots in six days of advance voting, easily breaking a record set during the pandemic election four years ago.
More than 28 per cent of all registered electors have voted, potentially putting the province on track for a big final turnout on Saturday.
“It reflects what I believe, which is this election is critically important for the future of our province,” New Democrat Leader David Eby said Thursday at a news conference in Vancouver. “I understand why British Columbians are out in numbers. We haven’t seen questions like this on the ballot in a generation.”
He said voters are faced with the choice of supporting his party’s plans to improve affordability, public health care and education, while the B.C. Conservatives, led by John Rustad, are proposing to cut services and are fielding candidates who support conspiracy theories about the COVID-19 pandemic and espouse racist views.
Rustad held no public availabilities on Thursday.
Elections BC said the record advance vote tally includes about 223,000 people who voted on the final day of advance voting Wednesday, the last day of advance polls, shattering the one-day record set on Tuesday by more than 40,000 votes.
The previous record for advance voting in a B.C. election was set in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic, when about 670,000 people voted early, representing about 19 per cent of registered voters.
Some ridings have now seen turnout of more than 35 per cent, including in NDP Leader David Eby’s Vancouver-Point Grey riding where 36.5 per cent of all electors have voted.
There has also been big turnout in some Vancouver Island ridings, including Oak Bay-Gordon Head, where 39 per cent of electors have voted, and Victoria-Beacon Hill, where Green Party Leader Sonia Furstenau is running, with 37.2 per cent.
Advance voter turnout in Rustad’s riding of Nechako Lakes was 30.5 per cent.
Total turnout in 2020 was 54 per cent, down from about 61 per cent in 2017.
Stewart Prest, a political science lecturer at the University of British Columbia, said many factors are at play in the advance voter turnout.
“If you have an early option, if you have an option where there are fewer crowds, fewer lineups that you have to deal with, then that’s going to be a much more desirable option,” said Prest.
“So, having the possibility of voting across multiple advanced voting days is something that more people are looking to as a way to avoid last-minute lineups or heavy weather.”
Voters along the south coast of British Columbia who have not cast their ballots yet will have to contend with heavy rain and high winds from an incoming atmospheric river weather system on election day.
Environment Canada said the weather system will bring prolonged heavy rain to Metro Vancouver, the Sunshine Coast, Fraser Valley, Howe Sound, Whistler and Vancouver Island starting Friday.
Eby said the forecast of an atmospheric weather storm on election day will become a “ballot question” for some voters who are concerned about the approaches the parties have towards addressing climate change.
But he said he is confident people will not let the storm deter them from voting.
“I know British Columbians are tough and they’re not going to let even an atmospheric river stop them from voting,” said Eby.
In northern B.C., heavy snow is in the forecast starting Friday and through to Saturday for areas along the Yukon boundary.
Elections BC said it will focus on ensuring it is prepared for bad weather, said Andrew Watson, senior director of communications.
“We’ve also been working with BC Hydro to make sure that they’re aware of all of our voting place locations so that they can respond quickly if there are any power outages,” he said.
Elections BC also has paper backups for all of its systems in case there is a power outage, forcing them to go through manual procedures, Watson said.
Prest said the dramatic downfall of the Official Opposition BC United Party just before the start of the campaign and voter frustration could also be contributing to the record size of the advance vote.
It’s too early to say if the province is experiencing a “renewed enthusiasm for voting,” he said.
“As a political scientist, I think it would be a good thing to see, but I’m not ready to conclude that’s what we are seeing just yet,” he said, adding, “this is one of the storylines to watch come Saturday.”
Overall turnout in B.C. elections has generally been dwindling compared with the 71.5 per cent turnout for the 1996 vote.
Adam Olsen, Green Party campaign chair, said the advance voting turnout indicates people are much more engaged in the campaign than they were in the weeks leading up to the start of the campaign in September.
“All we know so far is that people are excited to go out and vote early,” he said. “The real question will be does that voter turnout stay up throughout election night?”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2024.
Note to readers: This is a corrected story. An earlier version said more than 180,000 voters cast their votes on Wednesday.
