A woman has sadly died after collapsing in the aisle on a Qatar Airways plane for Doha. The passenger experienced the medical episode on the flight and despite the best efforts of cabin crew, she was pronounced dead.
Other passengers say the woman’s body was left under a blanket on a seat for the remaining four hours of the journey to Qatar, reports the Mirror. Passengers, Mitchell Ring and Jennifer Colin, travelling there for a connection to Venice, described the “pretty heartbreaking” scenes as the woman died.
The couple booked the flight through Qantas, with the airline saying it will investigate the incident. Qatar Airways will also look into the episode, which reportedly happened last week.
Speaking on local news programme A Current Affair, Mr Ring said: “Unfortunately, the lady couldn’t be saved, which was pretty heartbreaking to watch. They went to try and move her, they brought this chair down… and they put her in the chair 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.”
Crew members noticed there were vacant seats on both sides of the couple and asked them to move over to make room for the body. The dead woman was put beside Mr Ring, and covered in blankets for the remaining four hours of the flight to Doha.
Ms Colin, who is a nervous flier was traumatised by the incident and explained: “When my husband turned around and said, ‘move, move’, I was pretty shocked and I said, ‘are they going to put her there?’.” A woman with a spare seat in another row invited Ms Colin to sit with her after they claim the cabin crew failed to offer to relocate them further away from the body.
The couple then had to wait even after the plane had touched down in Doha as police and medical officers boarded. Mr Ring added: “It wasn’t nice.
“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 counselling? 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: “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.”