She's just resting

[khaosworks]

BA apologises for using first class seats to store corpses
Martin Wainwright
Monday March 19, 2007
The Guardian

British Airways has apologised to its most lucrative customers after twice using first class cabins in aircraft as temporary morgues in the last six months.

The bodies of elderly passengers who died in cheaper and fully occupied sections of planes during the flights were transferred to empty seats in first class because of a lack of space to store them.

Natural sympathy among other passengers was tempered by concerns about health in cramped conditions on long flights and the presence of relatives of the victims who were overcome with distress. Such incidents are very rare on commercial flights but many airlines, including BA, appear to have only makeshift strategies for dealing with them.

Travellers on a nine-hour overnight flight to Heathrow from Delhi last week were given an apology by the airline for any distress suffered after an elderly woman died in the economy section some three hours into the flight. Her body was moved as discreetly as practicable from the full cabin, a procedure followed in November when a retired American traveller died halfway through a six-hour flight from London to Boston. His body was covered with a blanket in a reclining seat in first class, which was 20% empty.

The latest incident saw the woman's body propped with pillows and strapped in with a seatbelt, while her daughter sat beside her, grieving and in tears for much of the remainder of the flight. Other first class passengers in the Boeing 747 jumbo said that there appeared to be no other system to deal with the tragedy, which happens an average of 10 times a year on BA flights.

The passenger nearest to the seat chosen as the temporary morgue, a BA gold card businessman who logs some 200,000 flying miles a year, said that it had not been made clear what was going on. He initially thought that the woman had been taken ill and was shocked when he had to ask for information and was told of the death.

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Comments

[madfilkentist]

I had to read that three times to convince myself I wasn't reading The Onion.

[bardling.livejournal.com]

Uh, well... what are they expected to do with a passenger dying during the flight? They can hardly dump the body in a loo, they haven't got access to the luggage hold... Using a seat with as much distance from other passengers as possible seems to me a perfectly sensible way of making the best decision possible in the situation. (No, I do not expect evey plane to be built with a space for a potential dead body. IMO, that'd be silly.)

[shannachie.livejournal.com]

True. But I must admit it would probably spook me a little bit to sit beside a corpse for the remaining 6 hours flight. but then I write horror stories...

[bardling.livejournal.com]

I'm not saying it'd be a pleasant experience. Otoh, having been in the presence of one corpse... well, it's not unbearable, either.
The point is, what else are they supposed to do? I don't think refitting every plane with a mini-morgue space is the answer, either. As for informing all the passengers... on longhaul flights there are always many who sleep or otherwise don't notice, if they're blessedly unaware, why disturb them. Those who notice and/or are concerned can ask & apparently get an honest answer (& presumably apology, if I know BA personnel at all). That's all I'd ask. I bet, where possible, those close to the corpse wishing to be reseated further away, will get that granted where possible, i.e. space available, too.

[madfilkentist]

Actually, I'd worry more about getting on a plane that had reserved space for a corpse.

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

They should handle it just like the submariners did in that ep of NCIS. "Unexpected corpse needing to be kept fresh for the coroner? Whoopee, we all get to have *lots* of ice cream!" =:o}