Hawaiian Airlines confirmed that one of their senior Los Angeles-based flight attendants died due to COVID-19 on Tuesday night.
According to an email from the company’s President and CEO Peter Ingram, Jeff Kurtzman tested positive for the virus in California earlier this month.
Kurtzman attended a recent flight attendant training at the Honolulu headquarters, according to a company spokesperson. That training linked to a cluster of COVID-19 cases, KTLA sister station KOHN 2 in Hawaii reported.
He joined the Hawaiian Airlines team in 1988 and “…over the past three decades had become well known to his In-Flight colleagues for his passion for discovering new places, people and cultures; his terrific sense of humor and knack for easy conversation; and his caring heart. He embodied the values of aloha and malama that we hold dear,” Ingram said.
Ingram said the company has reached out to Kurtzman’s husband and will offer all the support possible.
No information was available on Kurtzman’s age or whether he had any underlying health conditions.
More than 4,200 people have died of COVID-19 in L.A. County, with the virus on track to becoming the second leading cause of death in the county, health officials said Wednesday.
The county has reported a total of 164,870 coronavirus infections, with Health Director Barbara Ferrer saying young adults are driving the recent high infections rates, but older adults remain the mostly likely to die from the virus.