Forced to sit next to a dead body during a flight

[FlyingFiona]

Eep. Qatar really do like making the headlines for unpleasant stuff.

A Current Affair: Man forced to sit next to corpse for hours after passenger dies on long-haul flight

Has anyone had to sit next to a dead body on a flight before?

 

[eminere]

Oh dear.

SIA had a "corpse cupboard" installed on its A345s for this very purpose.

 

[jukebox333]

Oh dear.

SIA had a "corpse cupboard" installed on its A345s for this very purpose.

Because it happened that often?

 

[MEL_Traveller]

The by the couple’s own admission there were plenty of empty seats around. They didn’t move or ask to be moved.

 

[FlyingFiona]

They didn’t move or ask to be moved.

I don't read an admission of that anywhere. Did they say it in the program?

Post automatically merged: Today at 8:22 AM

SIA had a "corpse cupboard" installed on its A345s for this very purpose.

A neighbour told me her pilot brother's airline used to put corpses in a toilet. They would have to duct tape the corpse to the wall so that the body didn't fall forward and prevent the door from opening.

 

[kpc]

Don't they just put the bodu ln last row of economy and place a blanket over it? I guess if the plane is full....

 

[MEL_Traveller]

I don't read an admission of that anywhere. Did they say it in the program?

Post automatically merged: Today at 8:22 AM

A neighbour told me her pilot brother's airline used to put corpses in a toilet. They would have to duct tape the corpse to the wall so that the body didn't fall forward and prevent the door from opening.

It was in all the written articles… which appeared on multiple channels.

They originally had four seats in the centre block to themselves.

With the deceased in the aisle they would then have had three, meaning at least one spare seat between them. The wife moved, so there would have been at least two seats between the man and the deceased.

But there were also other empty seats, so he didn’t need to stay there at all.

 

[billmurray]

Would you still be eligible to earn SC and miles for that flight, even if you're deceased?

I mean, you commenced the journey but didnt complete it... so?

(Assuming family pooling was activated).

 

[nancypants]

Putting them in the toilet is well and truly out of vogue as they tend to be in rigor mortis by time of arrival which makes getting them out tricky. Seats are far easier

 

[Muppet501st]

It was in all the written articles… which appeared on multiple channels.

They originally had four seats in the centre block to themselves.

With the deceased in the aisle they would then have had three, meaning at least one spare seat between them. The wife moved, so there would have been at least two seats between the man and the deceased.

But there were also other empty seats, so he didn’t need to stay there at all.

I think they had issues with trying to move the body, (size) and they sat the deceased in the closest available spare seat. At least that’s the way I took the story

 

[Catweazle]

I can see this being a new Netflix television series.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

I think they had issues with trying to move the body, (size) and they sat the deceased in the closest available spare seat. At least that’s the way I took the story

That’s right.

Deceased was sat in the aisle. There were at least two more empty seats in that block of four, and more empty seats in other rows.

 

[drron]

The by the couple’s own admission there were plenty of empty seats around. They didn’t move or ask to be moved.

When you see the couple interviewed they don't appear to be frequent flyers and could well have thought you needed to stay in your assigned seats. Virtually every article has a headline including the word Forced.
"On the verge of tears during the interview, Mitch’s wife Jenny described the whole experience as “traumatising” and said she moved herself to another seat when a passenger in a different row offered her the empty seat beside them."

So the wife was offered a seat by another passenger.

"Mitch and Jenny claim that although there were other empty seats on their flight, the crew did not offer to relocate them to another seat for the four remaining hours of their journey."

And that points to the real problem. Surely the cabin crew should have suggested a move. And supports the idea that they thought that they had to wait until the crew moved them.

https://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/incidents/melbourne-couple-shaken-after-flight-crew-sat-them-next-to-dead-passenger/news-story/00ab5e3b69d884f086b72970af3829ba

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Perhaps the crew should have offered. But I dare say that after doing their best to try and save the passenger, but failing, the crew probably would have been in shock or traumatised themselves? They may have forgotten to make an offer, assumed another crew member had done so, or assumed the passengers would have taken the initiative?

My thoughts are focused more on the family of the deceased and the crew, rather than a passenger who could - and one of them did - move. If the wife moved at the suggestion of another passenger, the husband thought what? He has to stay? Because another passenger didn’t also ask him to move?

Doesn’t add up.

Pax were asked to stay in their seats at the end of the flight. A that means wherever you were sitting when the plane landed. Not sure why this occurred, no need to have kept pax on board.

 

[drron]

Did you see Dad in the news video in the link. I did not find it hard to imagine him thinking he had to wait to be told to move.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Did you see Dad in the news video in the link. I did not find it hard to imagine him thinking he had to wait to be told to move.

Yes. But they thought enough to contact the media?

Something doesn’t add up here.

At the very least the man must have been sitting two seats away from the deceased. Which is suppose could have still been classified as ‘next to’.

 

[p--and--t]

If they have previously travelled on JQ, they often announce passengers must remain in assigned seat for the duration of the flight.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

If they have previously travelled on JQ, they often announce passengers must remain in assigned seat for the duration of the flight.

Again, fair enough. Except the wife moved. So they knew those rules didn’t apply in the extraordinary circumstances.

You’d also think at some stage, with four hours remaining, that the couple would have talked to each other and asked if each other were ok. And the wife must have asked the husband if he wanted to move? Or was ok to sit there.

If he replied, ‘I’m not ok here, I want to move but no one has offered me to move’… no one around them, including the passenger who offered the wife a spare seat, said or did anything?

Perhaps it’s a media beat up, with the media seizing on the ‘sitting next to dead passenger’ angle.

 

[drron]

More likely to be a media beat up. Maybe the media had heard of the death and met the plane. Or were there for a different story.
The word Forced in virtually every article also points to a media beat up.

 

[RooFlyer]

From my reading of the BBC article, one of the issues about what was done was that the deceased was a 'person of size' and couldn't be easily moved about the cabin (I imagine at least not in a dignified way).