A flight headed to Dallas, Tex. was forced to make a U-turn after a human heart intended for donation was forgotten on the plane.
Southwest Airlines Flight 3606 arrived at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on Sunday evening where a courier for LifeNet Health was waiting to pick up the heart so they could remove its valves for a future surgery.
When the plane took off from the Seattle airport, the box containing the heart was accidentally left inside of the cargo hold instead of being unloaded, according to a statement from the airline.
“We learned of a life-critical cargo shipment on board the aircraft that was intended to stay in Seattle for delivery to a local hospital,” Southwest Airlines said in a statement to CTVNews.ca.
Unlike a heart that’s intended for a full transplant, which is accompanied by a courier sitting in the cabin, the organ in question was transported in a thermally controlled box stored in the plane’s cargo hold.
“We made the decision to return to Seattle to ensure the shipment was delivered to its destination within the window of time allotted by our cargo customer,” Southwest Airlines said.
Even with the delay, the heart reached its intended destination on time, according to Sierra Donor Services, the non-profit company responsible for organizing the donation.
Because the heart was being donated for its valves and didn’t have a designated recipient, the transportation window is much longer than in the case of a full organ transplant, Sierra Donor Services said.
The company said it can take up to four years before donated heart valves are ever implanted.
Deanna Santana, a spokesperson for Sierra Donor Services, said she’s never seen anything like this happen before in her seven years of working in the industry.
“No one on either the tissue-processing side or on the organ-donation side or on the tissue-donation side missed a beat,” she told local news station KTXL on Thursday. “We did everything that we possibly could to make sure those gifts got to the right place and in the end they ultimately all did get to the right place.”
Southwest Airlines said the plane was taken out of service due to an unrelated mechanical issue when it returned to Seattle. The airline said the passengers aboard the Dallas-bound plane experienced a five-hour delay before they were put on another flight.
