A Team USA judo coach suffered permanent vision loss in his right eye when a clumsy JetBlue flight attendant dropped a pot of coffee she was serving — splashing hot java in his face, he said in a lawsuit.
Arturas Lanchinskas, a third-degree black belt who owns a top martial arts school in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, was headed to the Pan American Judo Championships in Lima, Peru in July 2023 to coach the American team when scorching spill on Flight 1825 changed his life.
“It felt like a surge of fire hit the surface of my eyeball,” Lanchinskas, 30, told The Post. “The pain was sharp and immediate, like a burning needle.”
As luck would have it, the passenger being served the coffee was a doctor, who leapt into action to help and urged Lanchinskas to repeatedly wash out his eye.
Oblivious flight attendants, however, chastised the Brooklyn man for using the bathroom so much, according to his attorney, Erin R. Applebaum.
“He was even told, ‘Sir, you’re not the only one on the airplane, we have other guests who need to use the facilities,’ ” she said.
He went to a hospital after the plane landed in Peru, where doctors treated the burns on his face and eye, the attorney noted.
Eye specialists in NYC have since diagnosed him with a thermal injury and chemical burn of the right eye, Applebaum said. “He has a reduced field of vision and his eye is permanently sensitive to light,” she said.
Lanchinskas’ Darfight Martial Arts is ranked second in the country by USA Judo and Team USA won two silver and five bronze individual medals at the Pan American U15 Championships.
JetBlue did not immediately return a request for comment.
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