The "f*** you" airline again

Slugging nurse with new fare wasn't great, Jetstar admits

Jetstar's boss, Bruce Buchanan, has conceded that "we were not on our best form" when it tried to charge a nurse for an additional fare after she had attempted to save the life of a fellow passenger.

The mid-air incident on the flight from Singapore to Adelaide on November 6 was one of the matters put to Mr Buchanan and Qantas’s chief executive, Alan Joyce, in Canberra today when they fronted a Senate inquiry into aviation safety and pilot training.

Passengers on JQ62 noticed that an elderly man had spent an "inordinate amount of time" in the toilet, South Australian senator Nick Xenophon told the inquiry today. But one of the passengers, who was a nurse, had difficulty making a flight attendant aware of the the severity of the situation. When the toilet door was finally opened, the 86-year-old man was found slumped over after suffering a heart attack.

Senator Xenophon said the flight attendant did not know how to perform CPR so the nurse had worked to revive the fellow passenger. The flight was diverted to Darwin but he was pronounced dead upon arrival.

The nurse had to stay overnight at Royal Darwin Hospital because the capillaries in her face broke because of her efforts to try to save the passenger. But Senator Xenophon said the nurse was not happy when Jetstar later tried to slug her for an additional fare.

Mr Buchanan said all of Jetstar’s cabin crew were put through CPR training and had refresher courses every two years. But he said it was standard practice for crews to ask whether any medically trained passengers were onboard aircraft when medical emergencies arose because doctors and nurses had "better capability" to handle such situations given their level of experience.

Referring to the incident on JQ62, Mr Buchanan told the inquiry: "I think we were not on our best form the next day when she was disrupted out of Darwin."

Mr Joyce also told the inquiry that safety was the company’s top priority and he rejected "the scaremongering and misinformation that has been put about" regarding practices at the airline. Qantas has about 50 people dedicated to safety while Jetstar has about 30.

Mr Joyce dismissed suggestions today from a senator that standards had been diminished due to cost cutting, and said there was no difference in standards and performance between Jetstar and Qantas.

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