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 doubt the dead person had much control of the situation either.
Sometimes I am reminded of a book I read as a kid wherein one of the main characters dies and is eventually resurrected. She says that when you die, you don’t lose awareness or move on, you just passively occupy the body without the ability to move (like locked-in syndrome, I guess, but I didn’t know that as a kid and don’t know whether it was even recognized back then). In particular she describes the horrors of her autopsy.
If that were true, I wonder whether the person within the cadaver would be embarrassed to have caused such inconvenience. I know I would.