Why a Dead Flight Attendant May Have Been Left Behind

Perspectives from a former flight attendant on the death of Diana Ramos

I was polishing my latest post when I spotted the news about the American Airlines flight attendant, Diana Ramos, who was found dead in her hotel room. It’s hard to start Running Away From My Problems without addressing this serious news story first.

I keep ruminating on it.

Chiming in on news reports isn’t really my style, but I often see comments about airline situations and wish I could provide some feedback, so here goes…

If you haven’t heard about this news story, Dianna Ramos, 66, was found unresponsive in her Philadelphia Airport Marriott hotel room with a “cloth” or sock stuffed in her mouth. While her death is suspicious, there was no murder weapon found in the vicinity of her body and it was determined no force was used to gain entry into her hotel room, either. Her body was not discovered for two days (based on the flight details, it sounds more like two and a half days) after her crew members checked out of their Marriott hotel rooms.

An autopsy is currently being performed.

There’s been repeated finger-pointing at Ramos’s flight crew for leaving her behind. I’d like to address why this may have happened. I’m beyond tired of flight attendants being used as public scapegoats for the airline industry so these companies can retain their positive image and fail their employees.

I was a flight attendant from 2014-2019. Those are my official hired to retired dates, but for the last half of those years, I was on medical leave after my daughter was born in 2017. Still, for those first few years, I worked my ass off as a flight attendant, barely slept, and made little money. It was one of the most grueling and intense experiences I’ve ever signed up for.

As a new flight attendant, I was constantly warned to be aware of my surroundings and to stay connected to the crew at every layover. I remember being spooked by the stories of people who were obsessed with flight attendants and might follow us from the aircraft back to our hotel. Perhaps, this was part of the new crew hazing ritual because I’ve never actually met a flight attendant stalker, but I made it a point to never talk about my hotel to passengers.

With 25 years of flight attendant service, Diana Ramos would know all the safety protocols.

I shared an airline with Ms. Ramos, and I stayed at the same hotel on layover where her body was found. I believe the location leaves a lot of clues as to who deserves the blame in this situation. I understand the knee-jerk reaction of the general public to accuse the crew of ditching her. Crew Juice, a Facebook page that reports on current airline news, did a good job explaining in a post why the crew didn’t exactly “leave her behind” like most news outlets are reporting. But I have some additional insights:

It’s customary (by customary, I mean most crew will hunt you down and flog you if you don’t) for the entire crew to meet in the hotel lobby before you take your shuttle back to the airport. That’s standard. You must get from your airport to your hotel and back again. This means waiting for your shuttle gives flight attendants the perfect meetup location before being taxied back to the airport together.

It provides a crew checkpoint in a way.

But that all changes when you stay at a hotel that’s directly connected to the airport. When you’re at this kind of hotel, you step from the terminal directly into the hotel lobby, or in the case of the Philadelphia International Airport, you take the skywalk from Terminal B to the Mariott Hotel.

When a flight attendant is booked at one of these connected airport hotels it means you have an incredibly short layover, and you won’t have enough time to do anything but eat, sleep, and prepare for your next trip. It’s normal at these connected hotels for flight attendants to agree to meet at the gate because there’s no commute to the airport.

My guess is if Ms. Ramos’s crew arrived at the gate and the plane was available, her crew would have gone onboard and begun the process of preliminary checks and prepping their galleys. Flight crews don’t hang out in the gate area unless they are waiting for their aircraft to arrive. In other words, due to this connected hotel and no needed shuttle time, there would have been no flight attendant meetup prior to arriving at the gate. And if there was a ready aircraft waiting, that checkpoint might have been bypassed at the gate, as well.

After some time, the crew would have noticed they were one short. I’m certain they would have alerted the gate agents and crew scheduling to her no-show status. You cannot fly without the designated number of crew members on board.

At that point, it would be the company’s responsibility to track down Ms. Ramos.

If the crew was boarded with a missing flight attendant, crew scheduling may have attempted to get a reserve flight attendant on board to begin to assist with pre-boarding activities. All the major American Airline bases have “hot rooms” where reserve flight attendants are scheduled to spend a few hours a month. In this situation, if there’s a no-show or late crew member, a reserve would be pulled out of the hot room and would start the boarding process, so the flight doesn’t get delayed. Sometimes this means the reserve flight attendant takes the flight, other times they are only there until the scheduled flight attendant arrives.

But that’s where things get weird.

Yes, flight attendants are sometimes late. Yes, flight attendants go no-show before they start their trips in their base airport. But Ms. Ramos was already on a trip according to this account from PYOK. The crew had spent several days together (most trips are 2, 3, or 4 days), they alerted the company to Ms. Ramos’s absence, and they claimed they were “forced” to leave without Ramos. Although this PYOK article makes many claims that sound correct, I strongly disagree with the last paragraph of the article. It is highly unusual to leave a crew member behind mid-trip. It never happened to any of my crew members in the three years I was actively working.

Crews stick together.

They might not bond as best friends or eat meals together, especially on a short layover, but my crews were always looking out for each other. In the event of a catastrophe on board, it can be a matter of survival and as a stranger in a strange city, it can be a way to ensure you have someone that knows exactly where you are. When I started in 2014, we were all made aware of the murder of US Airways flight attendant Nick Aaronson while on his 2011 trip to Mexico.

Yes, there were times when I wanted to get away from an annoying crew member, but never would a crew leave a flight attendant behind in a city. So, I have no doubt the crew reported Ramos missing. That leaves questions about why the company didn’t investigate more thoroughly when they had to use a reserve to take over Ms. Ramos’s position mid-trip.

Something else to consider is Ramos’s longtime service of 25 years in the airline industry. She may have been in a crew with much younger and newer flight attendants, who would have looked up to her as the seasoned pro. If the crew agreed to meet at the gate, boarded the airplane, and began pre-checks, crew scheduling could have informed those crew members that they would be replacing Ramos with a reserve and flying as normal. Crew scheduling has been known to intimidate newer flight attendants, which could explain why they left without Ramos. Once on the aircraft, the flight attendants would be considered on duty, and they would most likely have been bullied into staying onboard instead of being allowed to leave the aircraft to check on Ramos.

At that point, it would be the airline’s responsibility to track down the missing crew member. It’s certainly not the crew members’ fault if they reported her missing to the company and weren’t allowed to disembark.

What’s more, Philadelphia International Airport is an American Airlines hub and Ms. Ramos’s body was found in the attached Marriott hotel, so you’re telling me in more than two days’ time not one single local employee from the largest airline in the world found it necessary to walk over to the Marriott hotel to investigate a missing flight attendant’s whereabouts? Not one?

Why?

I’m left with that question and it haunts me.

It should haunt you, too.

All airline crew deserve an answer.