Jorhat, April 20: The family of Surendra Boruah, a critically ill patient whom Luan Airways refused to airlift twice in the past four days despite taking money, today hired another air ambulance and flew him to Delhi for treatment.
The Guwahati-based aviation firm had first refused to fly the septicaemia patient at Dibrugarh airport on April 17 on the ground that the patient could be suffering from swine flu. It had, however, retained Rs 2.5 lakh as fuel cost and cancellation charges out of the Rs 9 lakh deposited by the patient's family.
Last evening, after the family received the swine flu-clearance document, it asked Luan Airways to stick to the contract and fly the patient to Delhi. But the airline refused again, saying it had insufficient flying time left before the mandatory maintenance check, Surendra's elder brother Tarun Boruah said. The DGCA guidelines require an aircraft to undertake a maintenance check after flying 100 hours. The flight from Guwahati to Dibrugarh and then to Delhi would take six hours 30 minutes while the air ambulance had only five hours left, the Airways said.
Boruah said when they contacted the airline last evening, Luan Airways first asked them for a scanned copy of the certificate and then for scanned copies of the latest blood reports done that day. Then they asked for papers of the driver and the ambulance, which would transport the patient inside the airport. Finally they told them that they had only five hours' flying time left and would help them contact another air ambulance service.
"With this air ambulance service based in Delhi, we had to haggle about the fare as it was asking for Rs 9.28 lakh. We demanded that the fare be fixed at the amount that Luan Airways had initially taken from us. At about 10.30pm, the airline agreed to the amount. Soon after we got to know that there was another Delhi-based service willing to do the round trip for Rs 8.50 lakh and we immediately hired it," he added.
An agent of Luan Airways confirmed what Boruah had said. The manager of Luan Airways, Rakesh Kumar, could not be contacted; there was no response to the calls made to his cellphone today.
"It was on the basis of air ambulance medic Dr S. Jha's recommendation that the cancellation was done and we had to face a loss of Rs 2.5 lakh. Later, the swine flu test report proved him wrong. Why should we bear the loss now?" Boruah asked.
Citing the harassment meted out to the family and the deterioration of his brother's health, Boruah said, "We will sue Luan Airways and are gathering all documents. But our biggest worry is that due to all this his health has deteriorated immensely. Doctors have told us that even 24 hours is too long a time for a patient of septicaemia not to receive better treatment."
Surendra was diagnosed with septicaemia by a team of doctors at the Dibrugarh nursing home where he was admitted on April 13.
Another brother of Surendra said there were carriers operating from Delhi that provided cheaper and better services. "The air ambulance which carried our brother today does not have a stopover at Patna for refilling like Luan has. It is faster and its doctors are more polite. Luan had best close shop here," he added.
