Plane flights nowadays are usually uneventful – and thankfully so – but one JetBlue flight last Thursday was anything but for a little Frenchie.
Darcy, the French Bulldog, was flying from Florida to Massachusetts with her family when something went wrong and she started showing signs of distress. Owner Michele Burt said that the 3-year-old’s tongue turned blue and she starts showing difficulties breathing.
“We all are affected by cabin pressure and oxygen fluctuations, human, canine and feline, etc., but the fact that the Attendants were responsive and attentive to the situation may have saved Darcy’s life,” Burt wrote on her Facebook page.
Thankfully, the flight’s crew came to the rescue and gave Darcy an oxygen mask.
Photos of the event have quickly become viral online, showing Darcy being treated for hypoxia. And while the photos seem nice and cute, hypoxia is definitely neither of those things and is quite deadly.
“I placed the mask over her face, and within a few minutes she became alert and after a short time she didn’t want the mask,” Michele said. “I believe [crew members] Renaud and Diane saved a life, some may reduce the value of the life because Darcy is a canine, I do not.”
Renaud Fenster, a crew member on the flight, spoke to “Good Morning America” on Monday and said that he’d “never seen anything like this” in his 15 years working for an airline.
“I was passing through the cabin to check up on a passenger, and I noticed [another] passenger, who had the dog out of her crate and the dog had an indication that it wasn’t looking too well. … And I believe the dog passed out,” Fenster told “GMA.” “The dog started panting very rapidly and uncontrollably, and so as a French bulldog owner myself, I knew the dog was overheating and needed some ice. I brought the dog some ice, and that didn’t do anything.
“I decided that we needed to consider using oxygen to support the animal,” he continued. “So I called the captain, and I told him, ‘I think I need to use some oxygen,’ and he said, ‘Go ahead.’ And right then and there, placed the oxygen on the dog and the dog revived like nothing else.”
Michele Burt thanked JetBlue for the great thing the attendants did for her pup and said:
“Good people are doing good things on a daily basis even if it is in small ways or big ways.”
“We all want to make sure everyone has a safe and comfortable fight, including those with four legs,” JetBlue said in a statement to ABC News. “We’re thankful for our crew’s quick thinking and glad everyone involved was breathing easier when the plane landed in Worcester.”
