Sky Cap Revenge?

Leave a bag unattended at an airport and the place is evacuated pronto.

Yet a guy sits in a wheelchair for three days and goes unnoticed.

Unreal.

A 72-year-old Kansas minister with medical problems is recovering in a hospital Friday after he was apparently left sitting in a wheelchair on a curb outside Orlando International Airport for three days.

Only when his family reported him missing did anyone notice.

Kenneth Davis became ill aboard an Air Tran flight en route to Orlando and requested wheelchair assistance to assist him upon arrival.

Mr. Davis was disembarked from the plane and rolled to a curb outside OIA.

And that's where he sat from midnight Monday until Wednesday afternoon.

Orlando police found Davis sitting in the wheelchair Thursday.

"He urinated on himself and his clothes were soiled but he was dressed in nice clothes -- didn't look bummy or anything like that," daughter Melinda Davis said."

No one noticed and obviously no one cared. According to his daughter, several people walked by where her father sat, out on the curb by the taxi pickup.

Davis suffered a stroke while sitting in God knows what temperature heat.

I can understand a passenger not noticing Mr. Davis, in the hurry scurry to catch a flight. But what about the people at the airport every single day? Not one sky cap, taxi driver, police officer, custodial staff, airline employee, Hare Krishna...not one person...not one OIA employee--noticed an ill man sitting in a wheelchair for three days?

What is wrong with people? Have we become so self-involved or so socially clueless to notice when something is a little off, a bit out of place in the routine of our every day? Would it have been so hard for whoever escorted Mr. Davis to the curb to WAIT, assist him to a taxi and make certain he was okay or ask if he needed directions to the nearest hospital?

And let's not let Air Tran off the hook. If a passenger falls ill during a flight, is there a procedure in place to have medical assistance waiting at the gate, especially for those traveling ALONE to a strange city?

Equally disturbing--in these days of so-called high security--is that Orlando police officers or their equivalent--airport security--did not come across Mr. Davis while walking a routine "beat" of the area or detect the man-sitting immobile for three days--through monitor of the security surveillance cameras.

If the cameras even work.

At this writing, the Greater Orlando Aviation Authority will not release the video from surveillance cameras. Mr. Davis remains hospitalized and unable to related the events of the past few days due to the effects of the stroke.

After a thorough investigation, I'm certain OIA will have the perfect excuse.

A big shimmering guy with large wings blocked the stranded Mr. Davis from the ever present watchful eye of the crackerjack airport security force.

***

"Report any unattended packages or baggage anywhere in the airport or on the airplane to airport security personnel or airline personnel."

--Greater Orlando Aviation Authority

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