Airlines accused of hindering key blood clot study
29 January 2003
Reuters
By F. Brinley Bruton

LONDON, Jan 29 (Reuters) - Airlines are dragging their feet in co-operating with a study on whether so-called economy class syndrome, which causes potentially deadly blood clots, is linked to flying, a leading researcher told Reuters on Wednesday.

One of the scientists in charge of the investigation conducted by the World Health Organisation (WHO) said that the carriers' slowness had hindered his team's research.

"The airlines' defensive reaction is counterproductive," the scientist, Frits Rosendaal, said. An international airline lobby group denied the accusation.

The investigation seeks to prove whether or not the potentially deadly syndrome, known as deep vein thrombosis (DVT), is related to flying and is crucial to airlines and victims battling each other in courts around the world.

"The airlines are not really used to this kind of research. That combined with a defensive position - being scared of publicity, lawsuits or losing travellers - have helped cause delays...," he said.

As a result, Rosendaal said the issuing of questionnaires crucial to a pilot study had been delayed by about five months.

Rosendaal did not say which carriers had been slowing down the study, which needs airlines' co-operation to analyse hundreds of thousands of fliers over the next few years.

The International Air Transport Association, which represents the majority of the world's international carriers, defended the industry and said carriers were doing everything in their power to help with the study.

"The fact is that we are co-operating to the best of our ability and don't feel that it is fair to accuse the airlines of dragging their feet," said an association spokeswoman.

"The airlines are ready to go on their part of the study," she said, adding that two airlines were participating in the pilot study, but declined to say which carriers were involved.

Sources close to the airlines told Reuters that the two airlines participating in the study are British Airways and Brazil's flagship airline Varig.

BA said it would let IATA speak for it on the subject and VARIG could not initially be reached.

DVT A FLYING DISEASE?

A link between DVT - which can cause blood clots in the legs that break away and invade the lungs and heart - and flying would give claimants around the world powerful ammunition to pursue airlines and demand millions of pounds in damages.

Cases in England, Canada, United States and Australia pit DVT sufferers and their families against the world's leading airlines, including Europe's largest, British Airways Plc and the world's biggest, American Airlines.

Ruth Christophersen, whose 28-year-old daughter Emma died after a flight from Australia to Britain, said the airlines' actions appear to show that airlines are not interested in finding out if there is a link between flying and the ailment.

"I wonder, do the airlines not want an answer? I would have thought that the airlines would have sought to get the study done and not put obstacles in the way," she said.

DVT victims and their families suffered a stinging defeat in December when a London judge blocked claimants' attempts to sue 27 airlines, including BA and American Airlines, whose parent is AMR Corp., over claims that cramped seating on long flights caused the potentially deadly blood clots.

Claimants say the airlines knew about the risks of DVT for years but did not inform passengers, while the airlines maintain DVT is not a flying disease.

The airlines argue that DVT is not an accident under a key 1929 international agreement governing air travel, and therefore they cannot be held responsible.

The London decision ran counter to a ruling made earlier on the same day in Australia involving Qantas and British Airways over a blood clot suffered by a passenger on a long-haul flight.

Lawyers for the airlines have said they would appeal against the decision in Australia, and claimants have said they would appeal in the case in London.

The WHO study is also being looked at carefully by DVT victims and their lawyers in Canada and the United States, where several cases are winding their way through the legal systems.

In the United States, law firm of O'Reilly, Collins and Danko in California, has a number of DVT-related clients and recently obtained a settlement from American Airlines, a move that surprised lawyers in the London case because it ran counter to the airlines' policy of not settling DVT cases.

But lawyers, DVT sufferers and airlines will have to wait for years to find out if DVT is linked definitively to flying, since the study's results will likely not be released until 2007, at the earliest, according to Rosendaal.