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Newport woman sues Southwest Airlines over death of husband stricken on plane

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Lawyers representing a Newport Beach widow filed a wrongful-death lawsuit Monday against Southwest Airlines, alleging that members of a flight crew didn’t do enough to help the woman’s husband when they found him moaning in an airplane bathroom after he had collapsed.

Richard Ilczyszyn was on a Sept. 19 flight from Oakland to John Wayne Airport when he suffered a pulmonary embolism — an artery blockage in a lung — about 10 minutes before the plane landed, according to the lawsuit.

His wife, Kelly, alleges that flight attendants found Ilczyszyn crying and moaning in the bathroom and failed to call for a doctor or arrange for paramedics to meet the plane.

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“What we are trained to do is assess the situation, and clearly they didn’t assess the situation,” Kelly Ilczyszyn, a former flight attendant for Southwest, said in an interview Tuesday.

The crew treated Richard Ilczyszyn as an “improper disruption” and waited until all other passengers deplaned before checking on him and finding him unconscious, according to the lawsuit.

In a statement, Southwest said its employees responded “appropriately and professionally.”

“Reports indicate that our in-flight crew made unsuccessful attempts to pry open the lavatory door in an effort to reach the customer and provide assistance,” airline spokeswoman Brandy King wrote. “Our pilots arranged for first responders to meet the flight upon arrival in Orange County.”

The lawsuit states that Orange County sheriff’s deputies were called to help deal with a passenger who they were told had “barricaded himself in the bathroom.”

“It would’ve cost them nothing to have paramedics meet the aircraft,” Kelly Ilczyszyn said, contending that the call for first responders did not include the medically trained personnel. “That’s what I don’t understand.”

The crew’s decision meant Richard Ilczyszyn’s brain was without oxygen for more than 30 minutes, according to the lawsuit. He died a day later at Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach.

The lawsuit, filed in Alameda County Superior Court, names individual crew members as defendants, in addition to the airline. It seeks unspecified damages for Kelly Ilczyszyn and the couple’s three children.

Richard Ilczyszyn was a financial analyst who was a contributor on CNBC.

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