A Wisconsin woman, Karen Momsen-Evers, was refused by Southwest Airlines staff to make a call on her cell phone that could have potentially saved her husbands life moments before he committed suicide.
On a trip back to Milwaukee from New Orleans, before takeoff, she received a text from her husband that read, “Karen, please forgive me for what I am about to do, I am going to kill myself…”
Panic stricken, Karen immediately attempted to call her late husband to prevent him doing anything drastic, knowing that the text was serious due to recent stress he had suffered.
“I started shaking the minute I got the text and I was panicked, I didn’t know what to do,” Momsen-Evers said.
However, airline cabin crew stopped her from making the phone call, ordering her to turn the phone onto “airplane mode” immediately.
Yahoo News reports:
In response to the incident, Southwest Airlines released the following statement to WTMJ:
“Our hearts go out to the Evers family during this difficult time. Our flight attendants are trained to notify the Captain if there is an emergency that poses a hazard to the aircraft or to the passengers on-board. In this situation, the pilots were not notified.”
The airline has since offered Momsen-Evers a refund for her ticket but has not provided an explanation of its handling of the situation.
The text reached her just as flight crew were finishing cabin checks, so Momsen-Evers texted back “no” and tried to call her husband. But a flight attendant intervened, asking her to turn her phone off.
“The steward slapped the phone down and said you need to go on airplane mode now,” Momsen-Evers said. The unidentified crew member explained that it was “FAA regulations.”
Helpless, Momsen-Evers waited until airborne and reached out to another flight attendant.
“I begged her, I said I’m sure someone can make an emergency phone call,” says Momsen-Evers but the other crew member told her nothing could be done.“I just wanted someone to go and try to save him.”
Momsen-Evers says she spent the duration of the two-hour flight sobbing in her seat and was only able to call police after the plane arrived at the gate in Milwaukee. But when Momsen-Evers arrived home she was greeted by officers who told her that her husband had already taken his life.
“They got on their knees, put their hats over their heart and gave me the, ‘I regret to inform you that your husband has died,’”Momsen-Evers said.
Momsen-Evers says more could have been done to possibly save her husband’s life.
“The pain of knowing something could have been done, it breaks my heart,” She told WMTJ.
Southwest Airlines has not yet responded to FoxNews.com’s request for comment.
Sean Adl-Tabatabai