A WIDOW has criticised airline staff who she claimed delayed using a defibrillator on her dying husband because of his hairy chest.

Jack Jordan, 62, suffered a heart attack on the Southwest Airlines flight to Albuquerque.

According to Albuquerque’s KOAT TV news station, his wife Caroline Jordan claimed a flight attendant dismissed a passenger’s suggestion they use an automated external defibrillator (AED) on the victim.

“The female flight attendant that had been there, right up there with us, said ‘Because his chest is too hairy,’” Mrs Jordan told KOAT.

Mrs Jordan told the station a nurse and a physical therapist had tried reviving her husband with CPR. She said her husband’s chest was eventually shaved and the AED was put on his chest but he died at Albuquerque International Sunport.

Jordan criticised the situation.

“I don’t expect the airlines or flight attendants to be nurses or doctors. Not anywhere close,” she said. “But, in that kind of a circumstance, one of the first things that they should be doing is getting that AED hooked up.”

Southwest Airlines defended its staff, telling MailOnline flight attendants had followed protocol for use of the AED in treating the passenger.