An airline passenger died after a flight attendant repeatedly refused to give her oxygen, a relative has claimed.

Carine Desir, 44, who was returning home to New York from Haiti on board an American Airlines flight last Friday, had complained of not feeling well after she ate a meal, according to Antonio Oliver, a cousin who was travelling with the woman and her brother, Joel Desir.

A flight attendant gave her water but a few minutes later, Miss Desir said that she was having trouble breathing and asked for oxygen. The flight attendant twice refused her request, Mr Oliver said.

After the flight attendant allegedly refused to administer oxygen to Miss Desir, she became distressed, pleading, “Don’t let me die,” Mr Oliver recalled.

Other passengers aboard Flight 896 became agitated over the situation, he said, and the flight attendant, apparently after phone consultation with the cockpit, tried to administer oxygen from a portable tank and mask, but the tank was empty.

Two doctors and two nurses were aboard and tried to administer oxygen from a second tank, which also was empty, Mr Oliver said.

Miss Desir was put on the floor, and a nurse tried CPR, to no avail, Mr Oliver said. A “box,” possibly a defibrillator, also was applied but didn’t function effectively, he said.

“I cannot believe what is happening on the plane,” he said, sobbing. “She cannot get up, and nothing on the plane works.”

Mr Oliver said he then asked for the plane to “land right away so I can get her to a hospital”, and the pilot agreed to divert to Miami, 45 minutes away. But during that time Miss Desir died.

“Her last words were, ’I cannot breathe,”’ said her cousin.

Miss Desir, 44, was pronounced dead by Joel Shulkin, one of the doctors who had been trying to help her, and the flight continued to Kennedy International Airport without stopping in Miami, with the woman’s body moved to the floor of the first-class section and covered with a blanket, Mr Oliver said.

Sonja Whitemon, a spokesman for American Airlines, refused to comment on Mr Oliver’s claims of faulty medical equipment.

Dr Shulkin refused to comment on the incident out of respect for Miss Desir’s family.

Ellen Borakove, a spokesman for the medical examiner’s office, said that Miss Desir had had heart disease, and had died of natural causes.

American Airlines, based in Fort Worth, Texas, is the largest US domestic airline.

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