Southwest flight attendant blames airline for husband's COVID death

A Southwest flight attendant has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the airline, alleging that lax COVID protocols during mandatory training last summer and slack contact tracing after an attendee tested positive led to her husband's death from the virus. Carol Madden, a 69-year-old Baltimore-based flight attendant who has worked for Southwest since 2016, is seeking more than $3m in damages for what the lawsuit says was the airline's negligence, according to the suit filed in US District Court in Maryland. She and her husband, Bill, a veteran and retired railroad signal engineer who drove her home from the one-day training session at Baltimore-Washington International Airport in July, got sick days after the training and eventually tested positive for COVID-19. Bill's oxygen levels plunged, and his health deteriorated so rapidly he couldn't take his own temperature. He died a few weeks later in a York, Pennsylvania, hospital, with COVID pneumonia listed as the first cause of death. He was 73. Southwest filed a motion Friday to dismiss the case. In the filing, the airline expressed its sympathy to Madden and others who have lost family members to COVID-19 but said blaming the airline for his death is "misplaced." The airline said it is required to provide a "reasonably safe work environment" for employees but that the "duty of care" responsibility does not extend to spouses or others in the household, even in cases of transmission of diseases at work. <br/>