If you’ve flown more than a few times in your life, chances are you’ve had an unpleasant experience with your fellow passengers. There are the people who don’t cover their mouths when they cough, pre- and post-pandemic. There’s the manspreader who’s decreased your personal space by 30%. Or perhaps you’ve sat next to the elderly person who wants to chat at 6 a.m.
All of those people can be challenging. But none of them compare to being forced to sit next to a person who’s no longer living.
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Mitchell Ring and Jennifer Colin, who are from Australia, were flying from Melbourne to Venice, Italy. During the Qatar Airways flight, another passenger walked out of the bathroom and collapsed. The woman later died, Australian show A Current Affair reports.
“[It] was pretty heartbreaking to watch,” Ring said. “They went to try and move her, they brought this chair down … and 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 place the woman’s corpse in the empty seat next to Ring and Colin.
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“They said, ‘Can you move over please?’ and I just said, ‘Yes, no problem,’” Ring recalled. “Then they placed the lady in the chair I was in.” The couple sat next to the dead woman for the remainder of their international flight: four hours. “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. The nightmare didn’t end even after the plane landed. Instead, the crew instructed the couple to remain seated as they removed the blankets covering her body.
The incident naturally traumatized the couple. They were disappointed in the airline’s behavior during the flight and lack of support afterward.
“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,” Ring said. “I don’t really know how I feel and would like to speak to somebody to make sure I’m alright.”
While the couple say they haven’t received any support from Qatar Airways, the company claims it is in the process of looking into the situation. “First and foremost our thoughts are with the family of the passenger who sadly passed away on board our flight,” a Qatar Airways spokesperson said in a statement. “We apologise 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.”
Ring and Colin are now trying to salvage the rest of their Italian vacation. “I’m trying to make the best of a pretty hard situation, but, you know, we’re on holidays so we’re really trying to have a good time,” Colin said.
