Woman says flight attendant barred her call to suicidal husband

(AP) / 16 May 2015

• Karen Momsen-Evers said she got a text from her husband moments before her April 3 flight left New Orleans. The text had asked for her forgiveness, and said he was going to take his life.

Milwaukee: A woman says a Southwest Airlines flight attendant barred her from calling her husband after he sent her a suicidal text, and she’s wondering if more could have been done to save his life.
Karen Momsen-Evers said she got a text from her husband moments before her April 3 flight left New Orleans. The text had asked for her forgiveness, and said he was going to take his life.
“I started shaking the minute I got the text and I was panicked, I didn’t know what to do,” she told WTMJ-TV for a story this week. She texted her husband back, and told him “no,” and was about to call him when a flight attendant stopped her, citing Federal Aviation Administration regulations.
“The steward slapped the phone down and said, ‘You need to go on airplane mode now,’” Momsen-Evers told the television station.
Another flight attendant denied her request to make a call once the flight was cruising, she said.
Momsen-Evers said she was allowed to call police once she arrived at the gate in Milwaukee. When she got home, officers met her at her house and said her husband was dead.
“I go to sleep at night thinking what could I have done, what should I have done,” Momsen-Evers told WTMJ-TV.

In a statement provided Friday to The Associated Press, Southwest Airlines said it was unable to share details about the situation, but extends “our deepest condolences.”