RICHMOND, Va. -- A woman visiting Richmond is raising concerns after she had an allergic reaction to nuts mid-flight and claims that staff on board didn't know how to use the type of epinephrine the plane carried.
Rebecca Hanau was looking forward to escaping low temperatures in Wisconsin to take a trip to Richmond. However, she said things took a turn for the first on her first leg of a Delta flight from Wisconsin to Atlanta.
She said a flight attendant gave her a granola bar containing nuts after they allegedly said it didn't.
Hanau said she took a few bites and was enjoying the granola bar and looked more at the label. She then said she realized the granola bar contained almonds and immediately notified the flight attendant that an allergic reaction was coming on.
“It takes sometimes a few seconds or minutes for things to get out of hand,” Hanau said.
Hanau said the flight attendant had to call someone on the ground to get a code to get into the medicine bag but said they were struggling to make contact to get the code due to a bad connection.
As the minutes ticked, she could feel things were getting worse. She felt her body closing up, started to get lightheaded and could tell things were getting fuzzy.
Hanau said as the flight attendants were trying to get the codes they also found two nurses on the flight. They were trying anything they could find like an inhaler and a Benadryl, according to Hanau.
Hanau said around 10 minutes later, they got the medicine bag open, but she still wasn’t able to get immediate relief from a regular EpiPen.
The bag contained a multi-vial EpiPen, which requires each dose to measured and pulled from the vial. That dose, she said, is typically determined by a doctor.
She claims the flight attendants didn’t know what dosage to use or how to administer it and said one of the nurses used her best guess on dosage and they finally got it administered to her.
“If those two nurses weren’t there I wouldn’t have made it. That’s just all there is to it,” Hanau said.
Hanau said this experience showed her change needs to happen at a national level regarding medical care on flights. She believes whatever training is being done is not enough and the airline could increase safety and simplify things for their staff by just getting single dose EpiPens.
“You have to get EpiPen on your flights. This is unacceptable and life-threatening,” she said.
CBS 6 reached out to Senator Mark Warner who plans to reintroduce a bill that requires EpiPen to be present on every airplane.
Right now, by law, airplanes only have to have the drug epinephrine.
“The EpiPen you can do an auto inject and it acts much quicker. This is common sense. So let’s be smart and put an EpiPen on every plane,” he said.
Delta in a statement to CBS 6 says Hanau did not notify them of her food allergies but says nothing is more important than the safety of customers. They add that flight attendants are rigorously trained on procedures and equipment to prepare for medical events.
“When we are made aware of a peanut allergy by a customer prior to their arrival at the airport, we’ll refrain from serving peanuts and peanut products onboard. Instead, we’ll offer non-peanut snack items to everyone (and announce that we have a nut allergy customer onboard and to please refrain from eating other products with nuts during the flight,” a spokesperson said.
The spokesperson added they encourage Individuals with nut allergies to carry appropriate medications on board, including an EpiPen, and check the nutritional information.
They state that Delta does consistently evaluate the contents of their emergency medical kit and they exceed the minimum required by the FAA.
