Man Misses Out on Heart Transplant After His Flights to Life-Saving Surgery Are Upended by Winter Storm

After a full week of flight cancellations, flights are getting back on track just in time for the New Year’s weekend. But the good news is too late for a man who missed out on a heart transplant desperately needs.  

Patrick Holland, of Alaska, suffers from congestive heart failure. Doctors say that without a new heart, the father of seven’s time is limited.   

He’s on the heart transplant list and last week, at the height of the brutal winter storm that battered the U.S., he received the call he had been waiting for.  

“They said I had to be there within eight hours,” he tells Inside Edition.  

Holland booked a seat on the next plane making the four-hour flight to Seattle, where the transplant surgery would take place, but when he got to the airport, he learned his flight was canceled.  

Learning of his situation, Alaska Airlines put him on the next flight. But due to the weather, that flight was rerouted mid-flight to Anchorage. Holland didn’t realize the flight had been rerouted until they landed.   

The next flight he booked was canceled, as was the one after that.  

And then, Holland’s luck had run out.  

“I called the transplant coordinator and she told me, the heart went to someone else,” he says.  

Holland is back on the transplant list, praying that another heart becomes available soon.

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