Rugby team stars in mid-flight emergency
Giving them a serve: players attend to passengers.
Fiji’s Rugby Sevens team, renowned for its brutal defence, has won praise for its response to a mid-flight emergency.
Players collect rubbish. Photo: Ryan Fee
The players were on a Virgin flight from Nadi to Brisbane on Thursday when the drama unfolded.
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Passenger Ryan Fee says a passenger became seriously ill early in the flight and remained in that condition for most of the flight.
Virgin flight crew had rushed to the woman as soon as her condition was known and the Fijian team doctor, coach and physiotherapist also assisted the distressed woman, who was falling in and out of consciousness.
That’s when the Fijian players swung into action, news.com.au reports.
Giving them a serve: players attend to passengers. Photo: Ryan Fee
Flight stewards had begun lunch service on the plane when the woman fell ill, so the players tried to take the pressure off crew by serving food to the rest of the plane.
“When the air hostesses were all flustered the team got up to finish serving food and then assisted with the clean up of trays for the entire plane,” Fee told news.com.au.
The team carried out the clean up of the lunch service, collecting the trays and rubbish after everyone on the plane had eaten.
One player even assisted with the treatment of the elderly woman, holding her oxygen mask over her face for over an hour.
Fee described the incident as a “fantastic bit of team work”.
The Fijian side was en route to Dubai where they kick off their HSBC Sevens World Series on December 4.