Southwest Airlines Accidentally Leaves Human Heart On Plane

Sorry in advance for this GIF:

From the Star Tribune:

The Seattle Times reports that Flight 3606 arrived in Seattle from Sacramento, California. Someone forgot to unload the heart before the plane left for Dallas, and the captain announced over Idaho they were turning back.

It’s not clear what the heart was for. Southwest said the “life-critical cargo shipment” was for a hospital and had been sent by a company specializing in shipments. Parts of a heart, such as valves, can be recovered when whole heart transplants aren’t feasible.

But no Seattle-area hospitals said they were involved. Organ-procurement organizations in Washington and California said they never use commercial flights for heart transplants.

Whaaa?! We got a mystery heart here, folks.

The flight took off for Dallas after a five-hour delay.

“Nothing is more important to us than the safety of our customers and the safe delivery of the precious cargo we transport every day,” spokesman Dan Landson told the paper.

So a human heart gets left on a plane, passengers are stuck turning back mid air, plus a five-hour delay, & no one knows quite what it’s for? I hate to imagine the person sent to the airport to pick that package up & the panic when no one knows where it is. And apparently everyone felt the stress of the situation because reports say people on the flight were looking up how long a heart can survive in packaging. (About 4 hours on ice.) I don’t know much on the topic so all I can say is hopefully it was just for research purposes & not for someone who really needed it.

Also, where do they store human hearts in a plane that it was overlooked? Is there a Heart Locker? Do they just nestle it amongst luggage? And why was this one on a commercial flight? I’m an organ donor (::pats self on back::) & I’d be so mad if I donated my heart & found out it got stuck in luggage with all the normie’s stuff instead of a private jet. I’d haunt Southwest forever for this. I want this to be my heart rolling into it’s new city towards its recipient…