An Australian couple says they are “traumatized” after being forced to sit next to the body of a passenger who died midway through their Qatar Airways flight.
Mitchell Ring and Jennifer Colin were travelling from Melbourne, Australia to Venice, Italy, when a woman collapsed in the aisle and could not be revived.
Ring said airline staff brought in a wheelchair and attempted to move the deceased passenger to business class.
“She was quite a large lady, and they couldn’t get her through the aisle,” he added.
Ring said that the “staff were there in no time” and that they did “a wonderful job trying to revive her.”
“They looked a bit frustrated and then they just looked at me and saw seats were available beside me — my wife was on the other side, we’re in a row of four by ourselves — and they just said to me, ‘Can you move over, please?’ and I just said, ‘Yes, no problem,’ and then they placed the lady in the chair that I was in,” he said.
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According to the couple, flight staff told them they must remain in their seats next to the body for the remaining four hours of the flight. They added that the crew took the blankets off the body to inspect it while the couple sat nearby.
“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, speaking from the couple’s vacation in Venice.
Colin, on the verge of tears during the interview, called the whole experience “traumatizing” and said she moved herself to a different seat when a passenger in another row offered her the empty seat beside them.
Ring and Colin said that they have not received any duty of care and haven’t been offered counselling after the flight.
“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,” Ring told the outlet. “I don’t really know how I feel and would like to speak to somebody to make sure I’m all right.”
Colin said that they are currently “trying to make the best of a pretty hard situation” because they are on vacation in Venice.
“We’re really trying to have a good time,” she added.
The couple booked their flight through the Australian airline Qantas and travelled with Qatar Airways.
In a statement to multiple outlets, a spokesperson for Qantas said, “The process for handling incidents onboard an aircraft like this is managed by the operating airline, which in this case is Qatar Airways.”
In a statement to Global News, a representative for Qatar Airways said, “First and foremost our thoughts are with the family of the passenger who sadly passed away on board our flight.”
“We apologize 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,” the spokesperson added.