KLM faces damages claim for refusing to fly seriously obese woman

KLM faces a multi-million dollar damages claim after refusing to transport an ill, very obese New York woman, according to American media.


Vilma Soltesz, who weighs about 425 pounds, has only one leg and uses a wheelchair, was refused a place on a KLM flight in October after a holiday in Hungary where she and her husband have a second home.
‘They tried to fit her into the back of the plane, but they didn’t have an extension to secure her,’ husband Janos Soltesz told the New York Post.
He was also told the seat back couldn’t handle his wife’s weight.
Every effort
‘It appeared on the passenger’s return that it was not physically possible for her to board the aircraft, despite every effort made by KLM to this end. A seatbelt extender did not offer a solution, either,’ KLM spokeswoman Ellen van Ginkel told the paper.
Efforts to get her on a Delta flight in Prague and Lufthansa flight to New York via Frankfurt also failed. She died several days later after refusing to visit Hungarian doctors ‘she did not trust’.
According to the AD, Soltesz is now suing KLM and the two other airlines for $6m in damages.

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