Widow sues Southwest over husband's death in airplane bathroom

Richard Ilczyszyn, a financial analyst and contributor to CNBC's "Futures Now", was on a Southwest flight last September when he fell ill, suffering what was later determined to be a fatal pulmonary embolism.

He collapsed in the plane's bathroom about 10 minutes before the flight was scheduled to land at John Wayne Airport in Orange County, California, and according to the Sheriff's report, the flight crew discovered him "slumped over," "groaning" and "crying."

When the flight landed, a crew member called the police, allegedly believing that Ilczyszyn was a disruptive passenger. In a phone call, a Southwest employee told the dispatcher:

"Apparently there's a passenger in – locked himself in the lav and is screaming and yelling."

All of the passengers were instructed to leave the plane before the officers boarded the aircraft, discovering an "unresponsive" Ilczyszyn in the bathroom. The paramedics were then called to the scene.

That delayed response to Ilczyszyn's condition – and the fact that Southwest crew members called the Sheriff instead of an ambulance – is why his widow, Kelly Ilczyszyn has filed a wrongful death suit against the airline. Ilczyszyn, who has worked as a Southwest flight attendant for 16 years, believes that her husband would have survived if he had received immediate medical attention. She told CBS News:

One flight attendant said she opened the door and she saw the top of my husband's head and his head was down and he was just whimpering, and [she] left him there […] Somebody that's head is down and there's no communication is somebody that's in distress, that needs help. That doesn't need a police officer. They need paramedics.

In a statement, representatives for Southwest said that the crew acted "appropriately and professionally" when handling the "unfortunate medical event." Road Warrior Voices reached out to Southwest for further comment, and will update this piece accordingly if the airline responds.

Sara Nelson, the International President of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, AFL-CIO, told CBS that flight crews are trained to treat any kind of disruption during a flight as a potential threat to security – or as a diversion to distract crews while a more dangerous incident takes place. She said:

It's possible that they could not determine that there was not a serious security risk to the flight.

Kelly Ilczyszyn believes otherwise. "They dropped the ball," she told the Los Angeles Times.