Thread drift but this is a pet peeve....
"Tourist", what would be your plan of action if you blew an outflow valve off the airplane, or took a bird thru the windscreen? If you were both so sick that you needed to keep the airplane pressurized to "ground level", almost any pressurization issue would have undoubtedly incapacitated you both, either blowing out your eardrums or giving you blinding pain thru a sinus-block.
I have had to place an oxygen mask on a captain who passed out for precisely that reason once in the distant past. Rapid decompression at about 12000 feet in the climb. Which means, went from a cabin altitude of 2000 ish feet to 12000 ish feet in a matter of seconds. NOT a big deal in the sense of blowing a window out at FL450, but he PASSED OUT FROM PAIN, as he was "a little stuffed up". IIRC a couple of passengers in the back, also flying sick, wound up with ruptured eardrums.
After making captain myself, I did not come to work with even the vaguest hint of a cold, and sent people home who came to fly "stuffed up". If that meant delaying the flight for a couple of hours till crew scheduling could scrounge up a reserve F/O, so be it. If people got angry, tough. Say the word "SAFETY" enough times to enough people, and EVERYBODY shuts up.
You guys are lucky, and definitely made a questionable decision to fly that day.
Last edited by hikoushi; 27th Jan 2016 at 07:15.