An inquest in Sheffield has heard that a British holidaymaker who was critically injured after falling down the steps of an aeroplane on arrival in Cancun, Mexico received inadequate care from local paramedics.

The Daily Mail reports that 61-year-old Rita Mellon from Gleadless in Sheffield had just arrived in Mexico for a holiday with her husband when the accident occurred. Witnesses told the inquest that she lay on the tarmac bleeding from her head and nose while waiting for paramedics to arrive. The inquest heard that the treatment Mrs Mellon received at the airport and in the ambulance on the way to hospital was ‘pathetic’.

Mrs Mellon was taken to hospital and diagnosed with a fractured skull. She died on 11 July, 2009, just three days after the accident.

A witness to the incident, Alison Pike, told the court that she was just behind Mrs Mellon as passengers disembarked from the aircraft and saw her lose her footing and slip on the seventh step.

The coroner Donald Coutts Wood told the inquest that Ms Pike’s evidence was at variance with the testimonies of other witnesses.

Another passenger on the aeroplane, Graham Corbett, contradicted this testimony and said he saw Mrs Mellon ‘stumble on the bottom step, twist and fall, her head hitting the concrete “like a boxer”’.

Holiday firm Thomson’s report – comprising statements by the ground crew – stated that Mrs Mellon had fallen from ‘no higher than the third step’.

Thomson admitted that there had been a ‘grey area’ of responsibility between airline staff and ground staff regarding the aircraft steps. Thomson said that it had changed its procedures following the accident.

Mrs Mellon’s husband of 39 years said that, as he disembarked, he turned round and saw his wife lying on the ground and called for medical help. Although air stewards arrived with bottled oxygen, they refused to use it because they were under the impression the plane was being refuelled and it would have contravened safety procedures.

Mr Mellon said he had to run to the tanker twice before he managed to discover refuelling had not started. He told the inquest that he held a blanket to help shade his wife from the sun and they then had to wait for more than 20 minutes before a paramedic arrived in a car. The ambulance took another 10 minutes to arrive.

Mr Mellon added that the paramedic had failed to hold his wife's airway open when she began frothing at the mouth.

'It just seemed pathetic,’ said Mr Mellon. ‘Even the police had a giggle about the paramedic.'

A post-mortem held in Sheffield revealed that Mrs Mellon had died of a pulmonary embolism – a blood clot on the lung – caused by deep vein thrombosis in her legs, which was the result of being immobilised after sustaining a fractured skull.

The coroner returned a verdict of accidental death and added that it would be 'difficult’ to judge whether different medical attention might have made any difference to the outcome.

Thomson said that an air crew’s responsibility now extended to the bottom of the aircraft steps – and refuelling now begins after passengers have disembarked.

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