TRAGIC: Vilma Soltesz (above), a 425-pound Bronx woman, tried flying home from Eastern Europe on three occasions but was booted off each flight and ended up dying in her native Hungary, as reported in yesterday’s Post. (
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The grieving husband of the Bronx woman who died after being told she was too fat to fly home from Eastern Europe is planning to sue three airlines for a total of $6 million.
“He wants to know why his wife had to die because the airlines simply didn’t want to be inconvenienced,” Ostrov-Ronai, the lawyer representing Janos Soltesz. said yesterday.
His wife of 33 years, 425-pound Vilma Soltesz, died Oct. 24 in Hungary, after being booted from flights on Delta, KLM and Lufthansa.
The couple had flown to Budapest without incident on Sept. 17 via Delta and KLM. Vilma, 56, purchased two seats for herself.
They spent three weeks in their native Hungary and had planned to return home in mid-October so she could resume treatment for diabetes and renal disease.
Vilma didn’t trust Hungary’s health-care system and feared doctors there wouldn’t know her medical history, her husband said.
Soltesz, a security guard for the Staten Island Ferry, will file the Manhattan federal court suit next month, according to his attorney.
“Very rarely do you have discrimination causing much more than humiliation and psychological damages, but in this instance, the discriminatory actions of the airlines led to something much more serious — Vilma’s death,” Ostrov-Ronai said.
All three airlines told The Post they could not properly board Vilma, whose left leg had been amputated and who used a wheelchair.
Vilma’s story touched at least one other large-sized flier.
“If somebody flies over, obviously they should be able to fly back,” said Manny Yarbrough, a 700-pound sumo wrestler and actor, who missed a Guinness World Records event in Rome last March when Delta wouldn’t let him board a flight out of Newark.
“In my case, it was only money I lost. In this case, somebody lost a life. You can’t replace that.”
He had purchased three tickets for himself and was previously a regular Delta flier.
Yarbrough, a one-time world traveler, said he’s given up flying because he doesn’t want to be embarrassed again.
Delta said it would have had to reconfigure the seats to fit him.
The federal Department of Transportation is investigating.
A federal law that mandates that airlines accommodate disabled passengers generally applies to foreign carriers that fly to and from the United States.
Obesity typically is not considered a disability unless it is a result of other medical conditions, according to the Association for Airline Passenger Rights.