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In Exhibit #4,238 that proves flying as a mode of transportation is horrible, a married couple were forced to sit next to a dead woman’s corpse for four hours on a flight from Australia to Qatar. After she died in the middle of the flight, the crew decided to place the dead passenger’s body in the couple’s row for the rest of the trip.
The couple, Mitchell Ring and Jennifer Colin, were on their way to Venice, Italy for a dream vacation after taking off from Melbourne, Australia. They thought they had hit the jackpot for the long flight since there were extra empty seats in their row. Little did they know.
About 10 hours into the flight, the couple says the woman exited the bathroom and collapsed in the aisle next to their row of seats. Despite efforts to resuscitate her, the woman passed away right there next to them.
“They did everything they could, but unfortunately the lady couldn’t be saved, which was pretty heartbreaking to watch,” Ring told Australia’s A Current Affair. “They tried to wheel her up towards business class, but she was quite a large lady and they couldn’t get her through the aisle.”
That’s when the flight crew decided to put the woman’s corpse in their row.
“They looked a bit frustrated, then they just looked at me and saw seats were available beside me, my wife was on the other side, we were in a row of four,” Ring said. “They said, ‘Can you move over please?’ and I just said, ‘Yes no problem’. Then they placed the lady in the chair I was in.”
He said the flight crew did not attempt to keep the woman covered and they wouldn’t let him change seats. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) states that a deceased person should be moved “to a seat – if available, one with few other passengers nearby,” close the dead person’s eyes, place them “in a body bag” with it zipped up to the neck or covered with a blanket up to the neck, and restrain the body with a seat belt or other equipment.
Somehow making matters even worse, Ring said that when the Qatar Airways plane landed the airline crew told him to stay in his seat while authorities came to retrieve the woman’s corpse. Number seven on the IATA’s list of what to do with a dead body is “disembark other passengers first” then have local authorities retrieve the body.
“There were a few spare seats I could see around us. I can’t believe they told us to stay… it wasn’t nice,” Ring said, adding, “They have a duty of care towards their customers as well as their staff, we should be contacted to make sure, do you need some support, do you need some counseling. I don’t really know how I feel and would like to speak to somebody to make sure I’m alright.”
Qatar Airways said in a statement about the incident, “First and foremost our thoughts are with the family of the passenger who sadly passed away on board our flight. We apologize for any inconvenience or distress this incident may have caused, and are in the process of contacting passengers in line with our policies and procedures.”