In March, a Frontier Airlines flight was headed from Phoenix to Las Vegas when a female passenger stopped breathing. The flight attendant yelled in the cabin for help.
A passenger who was trained as a wilderness first responder, Seth Coley, jumped into action and found the woman was unresponsive and had a weak pulse. Coley dug through the plane’s medical kit but couldn’t find an oropharyngeal airway, a tool that was supposed to be there and that he needed to help the woman breathe. Instead, he cleared the airway by manipulating her neck.
Afterward, Coley sent a message to Denver-based Frontier Airlines via an online customer service form: “I saved somebody’s life on one of your flights,” he wrote. “I would like to speak about the medical kit you guys have on your flights. You are missing some very valuable and simple things. She almost died.”
