Stewardess barred call to my suicidal husband, says wife
Karen Momsen-Evers says Southwest Airlines stewardesses prevented her from calling her partner after he sent her a text saying he would take his own life, which he subsequently did
PUBLISHED : Saturday, 16 May, 2015, 4:08pm
UPDATED : Saturday, 16 May, 2015, 4:08pm
Associated Press in Milwaukee
A Southwest Airlines passenger jet is seen with the Las Vegas strip in the background. Photo: Reuters
A woman says a Southwest Airlines flight attendant barred her from calling her husband after he sent her a suicidal text, and she’s wondering if more could have been done to save his life.
Karen Momsen-Evers said she got a text from her husband moments before her April 3 flight left New Orleans. The text had asked for her forgiveness, and said he was going to take his life.
“I started shaking the minute I got the text and I was panicked, I didn’t know what to do,” she told TV station WTMJ-TV this week. She sent a text back to her husband, and told him “no,” and was about to call him when a flight attendant stopped her, citing Federal Aviation Administration regulations.
Karen Momsen-Evers, who says Southwest Airlines stewardesses refused to let her call her husband. Photo: Screenshot
“The steward slapped the phone down and said, ‘You need to go on airplane mode now,”‘ Momsen-Evers told the station.
Another flight attendant denied her request to make a call once the flight was cruising, she said.
Momsen-Evers said she was allowed to call police once she arrived at the gate in Milwaukee. When she got home, officers met her at her house and said her husband was dead.
“I go to sleep at night thinking what could I have done, what should I have done,” Momsen-Evers told WTMJ-TV.
In a statement provided Friday to journalists, Southwest Airlines said it was unable to share details about the situation, but extends “our deepest condolences”.
