Summary
A couple on a Qatar Airways flight from Melbourne to Doha was forced to sit next to a deceased passenger for four hours after she collapsed and died mid-flight.
The flight crew moved the woman’s body to an empty seat beside them and denied their request to change seats.
Qatar Airways apologized but did not offer the couple support after the incident.
The couple, en route to Venice, criticized the airline’s handling of the situation but are trying to continue their trip despite the distressing experience.
I mean… it is shit but there isn’t a lot to do in this situation.
You might think they should put the body in the bathroom or cargo hold. Actual direct access to the cargo hold during flight is not feasible on most passenger flights due to pressurization/climate and safety concerns. Also, if they don’t have enough straps to tie down the body then that is going to be a REALLY bad PR mess when they remove a corpse that had been bouncing around and off of luggage during a landing. And if they do have enough straps, that is a completely different PR mess.
Same for the bathroom. For a 14 hour flight I assume this jet had multiple bathrooms. But you still have the problem of a body that bounced around a bathroom during landing.
Versus? You get it away from the family so they are less traumatized. You then put a blanket on it and buckle it in so that the body is safe.
It would really suck to be the people next to where teh body ended up. But if the flight was full? Having a flight attendant say “Excuse me. Is anyone cool with sitting next to a dead body?” isn’t going to end well… and all but guarantees you get the kind of people who shouldn’t be allowed near a corpse to volunteer.
MAYBE put them in a flight attendant seat but those tend to be near the galley which has its own health issues. And if it is a flight with sleeping quarters for the crew (likely for a 14 hour flight) that is both a safety concern (crew can’t rest) AND all the same “body bouncing around” problems as the others.
As for what Qatar Airways should have done? Personally, I would have just offered the couple a shit ton of miles. A full refund isn’t “right” since we have all sat next to things we don’t want to (I would honestly rather sit next to a corpse than a morbidly obese person who insists on resting their arms over my body the entire flight…). And general counseling really isn’t something the airline has on staff, although it would be nice if they offered to pay for some of it.
They could have asked if anyone had medical experience, then followed up with the spiel about there being a body on board and needing someone who can handle it. The pool of potential volunteers would be narrowed down to those who could provide some basic postmortem care and then respectfully stay with the body through the rest of the flight. The potential for abuse would still be there ofc, but it’d be way lower than just outright asking who’s cool with hanging out with a corpse for a few hours.
…honestly, saying that, it might not be a horrible idea to have a “I’m a medical professional” checkbox when buying the ticket. Even as ‘just’ a tech, I could handle some basic emergencies and wouldn’t be horribly traumatized around a body. Shit, throw in a free flight in the event that some kind of emergency intervention is needed, and I’d be down to have my name added to some kind of short list of volunteers for every single flight.
It would make the most sense to move the body to a flight attendant seat and have an attendant sit with the passengers. Unless the flight is close to its destination, then it’s probably best to just leave it as moving a corpse is a real pain.
I think that the flight attendants have those dedicated seats at the ends of the cabin and facing it for a reason, so that they can see what’s going on in the cabin. Like, probably safety reasons for that.
Honestly, I’d just as soon not have a corpse next to me…but I’d also just as soon not have a living person next to me. I don’t see it as the world’s most traumatic experience. I mean, I don’t know whether it’s optimal or not, but it’s an airplane, sticking it there isn’t a wildly-unreasonable thing to do. I can’t see getting that worked up over it, as a passenger.
On the flip side, I also don’t think that it’s wildly-unreasonable for the airline to give them a voucher. I mean, it’s not like “dead body on an aircraft” is a common occurrence and it probably doesn’t cost very much to keep someone happy. I mean, I’ve gotten vouchers for being willing to take a later flight when I didn’t have any schedule to keep.
The whole thing just doesn’t seem like enough of an issue to get that worked up about or play hardball over.
I don’t think that would be allowed as per safety regulations.
Flight attendants are safety personnel who also serve food and drinks.
The jump seats facing the passengers are there for a reason.
Having said that if airlines would be allowed to fly without flight attendants they would.
It sounds cold but isnt this kind of the point of a body bag? To contain a human corpse without contaminating the surroundings, as well as ease of transportation, while also not taking up a huge amount of space when unneeded?
Good points! I was thinking more of the seats they have in the crew area (not all planes have it though), but I suppose contamination would still be a problem, although how much contamination can a fresh corpse really spread versus a living person?
And, as an aside, one of my “favorite” flight stories:
Was flying into DFW for a connection to get home. About an hour before we landed, the flight attendants got up to do their usual credit card schpiel but cut off partway through and rushed to the back. Everyone around me turned around to look. I… went back to my book.
A few minutes later they actually do an “Is anyone a doctor” call. Then ten or so minutes later they talk about how when we land everyone needs to stay seated while a passenger is removed from the flight. And then… they got back on the intercom to say that we should ignore that request and deplane normally.
I meant to check what said passenger died of (even if the medical emergency was under control they would have wanted to get them off ASAP for liability reasons) but it had snowed three states over so DFW was already a refugee camp at 6 PM as every single flight was cancelled or delayed. By the time I got home (three days later…) I was already too lazy to check exactly when we landed and so forth.
I guess?? In case of a medical emergency they would typically try to make an emergency landing (I hope??). So how did this person die, and how certain were they that they could not recessitate? Did it happen over sea or land? Honestly it raises a ton of questions.
It happened over the sea.
Its an international flight. I went to american public school so my geography is shit but Australia to Qatar has a lot of countries in between, all with their own visa and even safety requirements.
If it were an actual medical emergency where they (at the airline) felt an emergency landing (which would still be closer to hours away anyway) would make a difference AND they could safely land somewhere that was willing to isolate the passengers who aren’t legally authorized to be in country (also potential quarantine concerns)? They would.
Otherwise? You go to the nearest safe place to land which is often the destination anyway.
That is why you’ll see the occasional story about how a transatlantic flight got halfway across and then turned around because of a problem. And a friend who used to fly passenger flights from LAX to HND would always talk about the point of no return where any diversion is about as long as the flight itself anyway.
Flying from Melbourne to Doha is almost entirely over the ocean.
With 4 hours left in a 13h flight, they were probably near Sri Lanka but the Colombo airport is one of the busiest in South Asia, and as you say, it’s a huge hassle to divert.