On Sunday afternoon, a Southwest Airlines flight bound for Dallas made a hairpin turn over eastern Idaho and headed back for Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. The reason, the captain told passengers: Someone forgot to unload a human heart.
Dr. Andrew Gottschalk recalled that his fellow passengers went through a series of reactions to the news, the first shock. A human heart being transported on a commercial carrier? But the next reaction was of kindness because everyone on board “was happy to save a life,” he said.
The captain went on to explain that the heart should have been left in Seattle after an earlier flight from Sacramento.
Then horror sank in, Gottschalk said, as some passengers with an internet connection began to research how long a heart could be viable for a transplant — mere hours.
Southwest confirmed that the flight had to return to Seattle on Sunday afternoon after officials realized the plane was still carrying the heart intended for delivery to a hospital.
But additional details, including its intended destination and what it was being used for, remain unclear. Also unknown is whether anyone’s life was ever in danger.
Southwest flight 3606 landed at Sea-Tac after about three hours in the air, and the “life-critical cargo shipment” was unloaded from the plane, Southwest spokesman Dan Landson said by email.
