An ailing, obese woman died overseas recently after three airlines refused to allow her to fly back to the U.S. from Eastern Europe.
Vilma Soltesz, who weighed 425 pounds, died Oct. 24 in Hungary after being booted from flights on Delta, KLM and Lufthansa, according to The New York Post.
Now her husband Janos plans to sue the airlines for a total of $6 million, he told The Post.
Soltesz, 56, and Janos Soltesz traveled from New York to Hungary on Sept. 17 to spend a month in their former homeland – a trip the couple made every year, he told the Post.
They flew to Budapest without incident on Delta and KLM. Vilma Soltesz bought two seats for herself for that flight, her husband said.
The couple spent three weeks in Hungary and had planned to return home in mid-October so she could continue treatment for diabetes and renal disease.
Her illness caused her to gain water weight, Janos told The Post. All three airlines told The Post they could not properly board Vilma, whose left leg had been amputated and who used a wheelchair.
“Very rarely do you have discrimination causing much more than humiliation and psychological damages, but in this instance, the discriminatory actions of the airlines led to something much more serious — Vilma’s death,” said the husband’s attorney Holly Ostrov Ronai, who said her client plans to file suit in December.
However, George Hobica, founder of Airfarewatchdog.com, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution he thinks it will be a tough case to win.
The airlines used passenger safety as a reason for not allowing Soltesz to fly, said Hobica.
Hobica said he reccomends that flyers, healthy or otherwise, purchase medical evacuation coverage, which is inexpensive compared to the cost of having to charter private planes in a health emergency. “I would have absolutely made sure that she had the coverage,” he said. He noted that airlines have their own rules and policies for when to allow obese people to fly.
He outlines some of the policies on his website:
For example: American Airlines requires that passengers buy an extra seat if they cannot fit comfortably in a single seat. Delta reserves the right to ask passengers to board the next available flight if they need more space; Southwest Airlines requires passengers who “encroach upon any part of the neighboring seat(s)” to buy an additional ticket. American Airlines and AirTran requires passengers to pay for a second seat if they can’t lower their arm rests, but passengers get the seat at the lowest rate possible.
“Perhaps what we need are standardized rules so that there’s no confusion,” Hobica said.
