Posted on 03/18/2007 8:45:53 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
LONDON (AFP) - British Airways has apologised after placing the body of a woman who died three hours into a London-New Delhi flight in a vacant first-class seat, media reports said Monday.
After the elderly woman died, the flight's cabin crew moved her from her economy class seat into a vacant first class seat, strapped her in with a seatbelt and propped her up with pillows.
Her daughter was given a vacant seat next to her, and reportedly spent most of the remaining five-odd hours of the flight wailing and in tears.
A passenger seated nearest to the corpse, identified by the Daily Mirror only as Paul, told the paper of how the crew had not informed him that the woman had died mid-flight.
"I went to the galley and said, 'She doesn't look too well'," the 54-year-old businessman told the Mirror.
"The crew told me, 'We put out a call to the doctor but it was too late. She's expired.'"
He added that "because of turbulence it (the body) kept slipping down on to the floor. It was horrific."
A spokesman for BA was quoted by the Mirror as saying: "We apologise, but our crew were working in difficult circumstances and chose the option they thought would cause least disruption."
According to The Guardian, about 10 people a year die on BA flights, and the airline acted in a similar fashion when an American traveller died half-way through a six-hour London-Boston flight in November.
The man was covered with a blanket and strapped into a reclining first-class seat.
Not a bad idea...alternatively, you could try to put a midget in the overhead compartment...
A tragic ordeal for the daughter and a most disconcerting one for those seated nearby. There needs to be one special compartment so that this sort of thing can be dealt with in a dignified manner. Where to place it, I'm not sure.
Yeah but you might not get your frequent flyer miles.
:-)
You are very bad.
Since this is a fairly frequent occurrence for airlines, you'd think they'd keep some sort of harness type seat belt add-on handy, so that the body can at least be secured to a seat. The same sort of thing would be handy for seriously disruptive passengers who need to be restrained. Other passengers should be able to recognize that the body can't be stuffed in a restroom or overhead bin, but being expected to spend hours on a flight with a dead body in a nearby seat, that keeps sliding down to the floor and needing to be re-propped, seems a tad unresonable and pretty easily avoidable.
"great script for Faulty Towers"
I think the movie was Weekend at Bernies or something like that.
If one has to go, what better way than.. uhh.. ,, we lost 2 on one cruise,, yup, eating dinner one night, gone the next.. I hope I'm going that strong at 95.
Dead people don't try to make inane conversation with you, don't try to monopolize the armrest, and frankly smell better than a lot of the live people I've been seated next to. What's the problem?
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