Dead Man on a Plane: A man dies mid-flight to Tanzania
If you thought it would be bad to have snakes on a plane, immagine how much worse it would be to have a corpse on the aircraft. Now immagne having to sit next to that corpse -- for hours. That's what happened to Lena Pettersson, a radio broadcaster from Sweden.
Pettersson was flying from Amsterdam to Tanzania for vacation with a friend of hers. The two vacationers noticed, when they got on a plane, that there was a 30-something-year-old man who looked ill. The Local is reporting that she told her radio station, Sveriges Radio, "He was sweating and was having convulsions." The flight took off as scheduled, and once in the air, flight attendants asked for help. The man was given a cardiac massage, but he died a few hours after receiving medical attention.
According to the Huffington Post, the man's body was covered with a blanket and placed along three seats on the plane, across the aisle from Pettersson, where he stayed until the overnight flight was completed and the plane landed in the east Africa.
Although Pettersson went on to enjoy her vacation, The Local explains that, upon reflection, "Pettersson decided to seek compensation from the airline, concluding that she had not been entirely satisfied with her flight." Kenya Airways eventually refunded Pettersson $713, which was approximately half of what she paid for the ticket.
"This feels much better. It is reasonable," she said. When asked about the experience, she was honest and undramatic. She said, "Of course it was unpleasant, but I'm not the kind of person who makes a fuss."
This is not the first time that a passenger has died on a plane while the aircraft is en route. This past September, Jetstar gave $100 travel vouchers to passengers on an 11-hour Singapore to Auckland flight because a man died on the plane after choking on an in-flight meal. Unlike Pettersson's case, however, his body was moved to the crew area of the plane. Moreover, a woman died after becoming unresponsive on a Delta flight this past week. Although the plane switched routes to give her medical attention, nobody is certain if the woman died on the flight or after the plane had landed. In one case, passengers tried to board a plane with an already-deceased relative