Woman calls Air Canada ‘callous’ for refusing to land plane early for dying father

Shanu Pande says she wants to know why pleas for a diversion to a European airport were called off when her father became gravely ill on a long-haul flight. He died after landing.

The daughter of a retiree is looking to a major Canadian airline for answers after her father became ill on a recent 16-hour flight from India to Canada and died upon arrival.

Despite asking the airline crew several times to divert the plane to the nearest European airport and hospital, Shanu Pande says she still doesn’t understand why it didn’t happen.

“I requested multiple times … three or four times,” Pande explained.

She describes the experience as “extremely traumatic” after learning her 83-year-old dad, Harish Chandra Pant, died from a presumed myocardial infarction.

Pant was in the process of permanently moving from a home in Mumbai to Milton, Ont., as a landed immigrant to be closer to other family members in his twilight years.

“What he loved about being in Canada was the natural beauty,” Pande said when remembering her dad.

“He was an avid reader of books, so he had easy access to the library and so that’s why he loved coming here.”

After an evening meal at an airport lounge, Pande says she, along with her father and mother-in-law, boarded an Air Canada jet just before midnight on Sept. 10 to make a 16-hour journey to Montreal before connecting with a flight to Toronto.