Family Sues Qatar Airways After Vegetarian Passenger Who Was Told To ‘Eat Around’ Meat Tragically Dies

The family of a man who died as a result of complications from choking on food that he had been served during a Qatar Airways flight from Los Angeles to Doha is suing the airline because they believe their father would still be alive if he had been served a vegetarian meal.

Asoka Jayaweera had been booked to fly with Qatar Airways from Southern California to Colombo, Sri Lanka, but he tragically died a short time after he was rushed into an Emergency Room in Edinburgh, Scotland, where the plane had made an emergency landing.

Despite cabin crew providing medical care to their father, Surya Jayaweera, and his sister Ashan Jayaweera, claim Qatar Airways refused to land the plane until eight hours had passed after Asoka had choked on his food blood oxygen saturation levels dropping to as low as 69%.

Asoka was traveling with a companion on Qatar Airways QR-740, an ultra-long-haul flight which flies north eastwards from Los Angeles, diagonally across the United States and Canada before crossing the Atlantic over Greenland and close to Iceland.

Around two and a half hours into the June 23, 2023, flight, the cabin crew were getting to the end of the first meal service and didn’t have any vegetarian meals left to offer Asoka, who was a strict vegetarian.

The cabin crew, however, told Asoka to try to “eat around” the meat. Asoka agreed, but as he tried to eat his meal, he began to choke, and his condition quickly deteriorated.

Cabin crew rushed to help and used a pulse oximeter to measure Asoka’s blood oxygen saturation levels while also requesting assistance from a ground-based medical helpline.

The pulse oximeter recorded a dangerously low blood oxygen level of 69%. At this point, Surya and Ashan believe the plane was flying over Wisconsin but rather than diverting at this point, the pilots continued to fly onwards.

Cabin crew tried to stabilize Asoka’s condition by placing him on oxygen, but hours later, he fell unconscious, and only at this point did the pilots decide to divert to get Asoka professional medical attention.

Around eight hours after Asoka first choked on his food, the plane landed in Edinburgh, where he was rushed to a local hospital. Asoka was admitted for further treatment, but tragically, on August 3, 2023, he died of aspiration pneumonia.

Asoka’s relatives are suing Qatar Airways under Article 17 of the Montreal Convention, which makes airlines liable for accidents that result in injury or death to a passenger during the normal course of a flight.

The key to whether this case is likely to prevail in court is whether Asoka choking on his food could be deemed an ‘accident’ and whether Qatar Airways was responsible for causing this accident.

Generally speaking, an ‘accident’ under Article 17 of the Montreal Convention has been held to mean “an unexpected or unusual event or happening that is external to the passenger.”

This meaning has been in place since a Supreme Court ruling dating back to 1985, although the courts will treat this with some flexibility, and a 2004 case determined that an airline’s failure to act can also be considered an accident.

Therefore, the decision not to immediately divert the plane in this latest case could be considered an accident. It’s important to note, however, that the pilots and cabin crew were in communication with a doctor on the ground, so the advice given by the medical professional might be crucial in determining whether Qatar Airways failed to act.

Many legal claims under the Montreal Convention are settled long before they get to trial, but in cases that have gone before a judge and jury, there have been some interesting discrepancies in how

In one recent case, American Airlines was cleared of liability over the death of a 14-year-old boy who went into sudden cardiac arrest during a June 2022 flight to Miami.

The boy’s family sued American Airlines, claiming that the flight attendants deviated from their medical and emergency training while responding to the incident, and this constituted an ‘accident.’

But a district judge ruled that while there was “little doubt that the American Airlines crew could have done more” to save the boy’s life, there is “rarely, if ever, a perfect response to a medical emergency.”

As such, the judge concluded that there was nothing “unusual or unexpected” about the crew’s response.

But in another case that also involved American Airlines, the carrier was ordered to pay millions of dollars in compensation to the family of a man who suffered a stroke on one of its flights.

The reason was that the crew had not followed the airline’s internal policies to the letter and these deviations amounted to an ‘accident.’