A Brooklyn woman died on a Haiti-to-JFK flight after she experienced shortness of breath and the airplane’s emergency oxygen tanks were empty, a relative says.
After a meal on the American Airlines flight Friday, Carine Desir said she felt ill and was thirsty, said her cousin Antonio Oliver, who was with her.
A flight attendant gave her water, but Desir, 44, a nurse, had trouble breathing and asked for oxygen. A crew member refused, Oliver said.
“Don’t let me die,” Desir pleaded, Oliver said.
After passengers became agitated, an attendant tried to provide oxygen from a portable tank – but it was empty, he said. Two doctors and nurses tried another tank, but it was also empty, he said.
A “box,” possibly a defibrillator, was used but didn’t function, Oliver said
“I cannot believe what is happening on the plane,” he said. “She cannot get up, and nothing on the plane works.”
Oliver said the pilot agreed to divert to Miami, but she died and the flight went to JFK – with her body on the first-class cabin floor.
“Her last words were, ‘I cannot breathe,’ ” he said.
“It’s too painful to describe,” said Desir’s husband, Mario Fontus, 53, last night at his Flatbush home. “We lost the best of the best.”
Relatives said Desir, a mother of two, was taking pills for high blood pressure.
“It can’t be legal for an airline to have no [oxygen] and no proper working first aid kits,” said daughter Tatiana Saint-Victor, 23.
The airline said Desir died after medical professionals tried to save her, but wouldn’t comment on claims of faulty equipment.
The medical examiner said Desir died of natural causes.