Sir, – Dr Frank D’Arcy (June 26th) complains about the lack of medical equipment on a Ryanair flight.
Operators over Europe are required to comply with European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) requirements. These specify that operators such as Ryanair must carry first aid kits, the quantity in proportion to the number of passengers carried. EASA also requires emergency medical kits to be carried, these contain adrenaline and other items appropriate for a doctor to use, but only if the route takes the aircraft more than 60 minutes flying time from “an aerodrome at which qualified medical assistance could be expected to be available”. Clearly in a flight to Marseilles over a densely populated area the aircraft would be passing continually close to suitable places to land in an emergency.
In the case of defibrillators, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) does require these to carried on aircraft under its jurisdiction. But EASA has not yet followed suit. It is said that cases of cardiac arrest on aircraft are very rare, and even when defibrillators are used “in most cases they are not successful”. – Yours, etc,