HAPPY HALLOWEEN from the Children’s Medical Escort Program!

Teresa Garza and Tammy Meade share about our program at DFW Health & Safety Fair

Photo at left is Ana Perkins and Mary Rhoden Lobban, both AE flight attendants as they swap out escorting Baby Mark from BZE to MIA to STL. He was born with dislocated hips and club feet and will be treated at Shriners in STL.

On the right is Isabel Moss, an AE F/A and one of our long time escorts bringing 5 year old Aydin from GUA to MIA. He will go on with Shenae Johnson to EWR for his facial surgery.

 Special thanks also to the incredible escorts who volunteer for the Paris trips….these can be really complicated…see this example of report from a trip this month:

“On Oct. 25, Gael Yanogo, age 4 was returning home to Burkina Faso following urological surgery in CMH. His routing was CMH/ORD/CDG on AA. Diane Rigsby, an AA Res agent in DFW flew from DFW to CMH to meet him and accompany him on to ORD where they would meet Debbie Baird, another DFWAA Res agent who was taking a flight from DFW to ORD. From there, Deb and Gael were to continue on to CDG where they would meet the ASF (Air France) escort who would take him home to Burkina Faso.

But before Diane even arrived in CMH, Connie Lowry, our trip coordinator, received word that Debbie’s flight from DFW to ORD had a mechanical. Then by the time Diane landed in CMH the delay had gone into more of a “creeping” delay with a real possibility that Debbie would miss her flight from ORD to CDG. She had one backup flight to ORD but it was completely full and, being a Res agent, Debbie could not take a jump seat. Diane landed in CMH and immediately it was decided that she should take Gael and go right back to DFW, have Debbie wait for them there, then take the DFW to CDG nonstop. Problem was, we had less than 30 minutes to get all of this arranged. Gael’s ticket had to be changed, Diane’s A12 had to be changed, and finally, Debbie’s A12 had to be changed.

Yet somehow, all this was accomplished and both the CDG police and the ASF escort were notified of the new arrival. Now, in case anyone is wondering why we didn’t route Gael through DFW in the first place, this is just another thing that must be considered, especially on the CDG trips. Had we done this, Diane would have had no backup at all and if the CMH/DFW flight had been delayed, they would have misconnected to the CDG trip which had a minimal connecting time anyway. Then the entire trip would have been scrapped, including the final leg on Air France. There is so much that can go wrong with these CDG trips and they can suddenly turn into real nightmares for all concerned but especially for our trip coordinators. We were lucky with this one”.