What Happens if Someone Dies on a Plane?

23.02.2024 - 19:49 / cntraveler.com / Lale Arikoglu / Airlines

Traveler editor Lale Arikoglu was flying through the night from New York to Istanbul the summer of 2017 when a group of flight attendants rushed down the aisle and stopped next to a woman two rows behind her. The passenger had been unresponsive when her seatmate tried to wake her so he could use the bathroom. The crew called for a doctor, and the pilot got on the PA system to let passengers know they would be making an emergency landing in Zurich.

“We all sat in silence, listening to the flight attendants yell at each other in Turkish as they tried to resuscitate the woman while we descended,” says Arikoglu. On arrival, the plane sat on the tarmac; you could see the flashing lights of the police and ambulance waiting outside, she says. The emergency officials boarded the plane and carried the woman down the aisle past bleary-eyed passengers. The Swiss police, struggling to find the woman's bag—she was traveling alone—asked passengers to claim their own as the police used process of elimination to recover it. The remaining passengers stayed on the plane; an hour went by, maybe two. Without further explanation, the pilot said they were clear to leave and the plane continued on its journey to Istanbul. “Even years later, I think about that woman a lot,” says Arikoglu. “We never found out what happened. She was only around 30.”

It's not surprising that in-flight deaths regularly grab the headlines. In February, a 63-year-old passenger died on a Lufthansa flight from Bangkok to Munich following a medical emergency on the plane. A little over a month prior, a passenger was reportedly found dead in the plane bathroom during a Jet2 flight from the Canary Islands to England. And in September 2023, an 83-year-old passenger died after experiencing medical symptoms during a long-haul flight from India to Canada. The plane was not diverted, according to CBC News, and the family is pursuing legal action against Air Canada.

Startling news stories like these can understandably leave travelers wondering, what happens if someone dies on a plane? But despite the widespread media coverage of in-flight deaths, “death onboard a commercial aircraft is actually quite rare,” says Dr. Arnold Seid, medical director of Global Rescue, which focuses on medical emergencies while traveling. The National Safety Council’s 2021 report said major airlines experienced no onboard fatalities. A 2021 study published in The American Journal of Emergency Medicine found the global incidence of in-flight medical emergencies was 18.2 events per million passengers with a mortality rate was 0.21 per million passengers. A projected 4.7 billion passengers are expected to fly in 2024—a number that would surpass pre-pandemic levels—so mathematically,