Family speaks out after Air Force veteran, 62, was ‘left to die by American Airlines crew who allowed entire plane to deboard before he got help’

The family of an Air Force veteran who died of a heart attack after an American Airlines crew allegedly delayed calling for help until the entire plane had deboarded have spoken out about the “mind-boggling” hold-up that continues to haunt them.

In an exclusive interview with The Independent, relatives of John William Cannon said they are still struggling to process the unthinkable tragedy.

“He was treated like an object,” Cannon’s son Kyle said. “They never even gave him a chance.”

The 62-year-old was traveling on connecting flights from his home in Louisville, Kentucky to Durango, a small city in southwest Colorado for a funeral when he suffered a “medical crisis” on the last leg of the journey from Dallas Fort-Worth on April 28, 2023.

According to a wrongful death lawsuit brought against American Airlines by Kyle, who is also the executor of his father’s estate, Cannon had passed out on the jetway while getting off his first flight but was still allowed to get on his connection to Durango. At points during the two-hour-and-twenty-minute trip, he was in visible distress, struggling to breathe and falling in and out of consciousness.

The crew, however, waited until the plane had landed in Colorado, taxied to the gate and all other passengers got off before calling for help, alleges the lawsuit, which was reported first by The Independent.

The father of one – described by his family as a “very loving person” and an avid outdoorsman who loved tinkering with cars and motorcycles and had no history of heart problems – went into cardiac arrest in the back of the ambulance and died a few hours later at the hospital.

Kyle Cannon, 28, said he simply cannot fathom the delay in summoning assistance - a decision he described as “mind-boggling.”

“I’ll be out in the field, thinking, and I just can’t wrap my head around it,” said Kyle, a Kentucky farmer. “When you have somebody on board who is in critical shape, you should do all that you have in your power to get that person the help they need. He should have been the first person off the plane, but he was the last person. It’s hard to believe that that could actually happen. But it did.”

In the two years since Cannon’s death, his family has been left trying to piece together exactly what happened on that flight. They say American Airlines has been less than forthcoming and what they have learned has brought them little comfort.

“Trying to piece it together, and trying to make it make sense, and hoping that they tried to save him, and then with each piece of information that we would uncover, it just got worse and worse and worse and worse and worse,” said Kyle.

Kyle’s aunt, Cannon’s sister Kate, said this has been one of the most excruciating parts of bouncing back.

"We were hoping to find answers and get some solace and it has just been one misstep after another,” she told The Independent. “It just tears you up, reliving it again and again.”

The situation constituted “just epic fails” from start to finish, said Cannon’s other sister, Molly.

She had seen him off at the Louisville airport on the morning of his death, and recalled her brother’s final wave to her as he went through security.

“I was the last person that saw him alive – he turned around when he was going through security and waved. I didn’t know that would be the last time I would see him. I can't get that out of my mind,” she told The Independent.

Her brother had “a sense of humor like no other,” Molly said.

“He loved people, he always worked with people, and was a very loving person,” she went on. “He cared a lot. Had a big heart. As a teenager, he was really into motorcycles, both dirt bikes and street bikes. He was incredibly coordinated, he could do wheelies down the whole street. I couldn't understand how he did all the things he could do."

The three lost their mother at the age of 89, a year before Cannon’s death. But, Molly said, losing a sibling “is a different feeling. It just blows you out of the water.”

It was Molly who initially became concerned about Cannon’s whereabouts after he failed to contact her when he got to Durango, where he was heading for the funeral of his best friend’s partner. She began calling her brother’s phone continuously, to no avail. So, at around 10pm she tried calling the friend who was supposed to pick him up at the airport. But, he, too, failed to pick up, Molly said.

Then, around midnight, a woman finally answered Cannon’s phone. It was an ICU nurse at Mercy Medical Center, who said Cannon was in dire shape. Molly immediately contacted Kate, who said neither of them “had any idea what to do.” The two began booking flights to get to Durango the next morning, so they could be by their brother’s side as he recuperated. Then, shortly after they had their tickets in hand, the phone rang.

“The hospital called us back and they said, ‘If you want to say goodbye to your brother, we’re going to hold the phone up to his ear,’” Kate recalled, describing the moment as, alternately, “very surreal” and “unimaginable.”

She had tears in her eyes as she shared those final moments: “Those last few minutes when he was dying, we were saying, ‘I love you, John, I’m going to miss you, John. More even than I love you, I’m going to miss you so much’.”

Kate said she relives the situation over and over in her mind. She hates thinking about her brother suffering, and finds holidays without him especially tough.

“I just have to be grateful for the time we had with him, but I definitely feel robbed for the time we didn’t,” she said.

The weekend after Cannon’s death, Molly spoke to a nurse at the hospital who told her the medics who brought her brother in seemed “traumatized” by the way the situation had been handled.

“They see a lot of really, really horrific stuff, and for them to say that, it really speaks to how bad this was," Kyle said, adding that the first responders encouraged the family to sue.

Kyle believes his father should have been sent to the hospital rather than having been allowed to board his connecting flight after blacking out in Dallas. This, Kyle contended, “would have probably saved his life.”

“We would like American to show some accountability so this doesn't happen to somebody else,” he said. “We can’t bring him back, but if this could save somebody else’s life, that’s what he would want.”

The family’s lawsuit slams American for failing to provide Cannon with first aid while onboard, failing to turn him over to a physician in a timely manner, and “failing to prioritize… Cannon in the deboarding process once he exhibited signs of extreme physical distress onboard the aircraft.”

Cabin crews are trained in CPR, and all commercial airliners have been required since 2004 to carry defibrillators onboard, family attorney Joseph LoRusso told The Independent.

“Nobody’s expecting a flight attendant to be a doctor, but you have to at least attempt a recovery,” he said.

In an email, an American Airlines spokesperson told The Independent, “We are reviewing the complaint.”