Oh My: Dead Body Placed Next To Couple On Qatar Airways Flight

The BBC reports on a recent incident that happened on a Qatar Airways flight. I’ve gotta say, this sounds pretty bad, though given the crew’s failure in handling this proactively, passengers should’ve probably advocated for themselves a bit more…

Woman dies on flight, corpse placed next to others

An Australian couple has come forward with a rather traumatic incident that happened recently, while they were traveling on Qatar Airways from Melbourne (MEL) to Doha (DOH) to Venice (VCE).

On the first flight, they were seated in economy near the lavatories. With around four hours remaining in the flight, another passenger died, tragically. This happened while she emerged from one of the lavatories, and she reportedly collapsed in the aisle. The crew responded quickly, but as the husband describes it, “unfortunately the lady couldn’t be saved, which was pretty heart-breaking to watch.”

The crew then reportedly tried to move the woman’s body toward business class, “but she was quite a large lady and they couldn’t get her through the aisle.” As a result, they decided to place her in the seats closest to her location at the time, which happened to be where this couple was seated.

The couple initially had a set of four seats to themselves. The crew asked the husband to move over, so that the corpse could be placed in the aisle seat that he was in, and he complied. So for the remainder of the flight, he sat next to the corpse, which was covered in blankets.

The wife ended up moving to another seat, as a nearby passenger encouraged her to move, given the situation. Meanwhile the husband says he wasn’t given the same option of doing so, even though there were other vacant seats.

Upon landing, passengers were asked to remain seated, while police and medical staff came onboard. At this point, blankets were pulled off the woman, so she was exposed.

The couple understandably doesn’t appreciate how this situation was handled, with the wife explaining that “we totally understand that we can’t hold the airline responsible for the poor lady’s death, but there has to be a protocol to look after the customers on board.”

In a statement, Qatar Airways said the following:

“First and foremost our thoughts are with the family of the passenger who sadly passed away on board our flight. 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.”

Below you can see an interview with the couple about what happened.

This is a tricky situation, but should’ve been handled better

Deaths onboard planes happen more often than most people would think. Handling these situations can of course be tricky, with finding the right balance between being able to continue the flight, while isolating the deceased and minimizing inconvenience for other passengers.

Back in the day, Singapore Airlines had a “corpse cupboard” on its Airbus A340-500s, which operated the world’s longest flights. This was intended exactly for situations like this. However, other planes don’t generally have this.

So the procedure is typically to try to find a spot to place the body that minimizes inconvenience for others, whether that’s in the galley, in a blocked off lavatory, or in a row of seats away from others. In this case, it seems like one of the challenges was the weight of the deceased passenger, and being able to move her body.

Obviously it sounds like this situation should’ve been handled better. However, what’s not clear is whether the couple actually asked the crew to have their seats moved. There’s talk of the crew asking the man to move over so the body could be accommodated, but no talk of him asking about moving seats, and the request being denied.

Don’t get me wrong, it should have been obvious to the crew to offer this, so I don’t understand where the breakdown was. But it goes without saying that if there were open seats (which there seemed to me, given that the wife only moved at the invitation of another passenger, rather than due to the crew’s recommendation), the passengers should’ve proactively been moved to them. And if the only open seats were in business class (which, it doesn’t sound like that was the case), then the passengers should even be moved there.

Bottom line

Deaths onboard flights happen quite often, and it’s no doubt a challenging situation for both crew and passengers. On a recent Qatar Airways flight, a woman died shortly after using the lavatory, and collapsed in the aisle. Due to challenges with moving the body, the crew placed her in the closest row of seats, which happened to be occupied.

Rather than moving the passengers seated there to other empty seats, the crew instead just asked them to move over a couple of seats, and sit next to the corpse. This sounds like it could’ve been handled very differently…

What do you make of this odd Qatar Airways incident?