DEAD WAIT
I’m a flight attendant – here’s what we do if a passenger dies on the plane
A FLIGHT attendant has revealed what they do if a passenger dies on a plane.
If there is no room elsewhere on the plane the deceased passenger may not be moved until the flight lands.
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user Sheena Marie, who works as a flight attendant, explained: "If they have a heart attack and die, and there is nothing we can do about it, and we can't start CPR, we are just going to wait until we get to our final destination.
"We are going to keep that dead body where it is at."
She did add that if there is enough room on the plane, such as a whole back row being free, then the body could be moved there and "covered with a blanket".
Passengers would then be let off the plane before medical professionals board to remove the body, and the plane taken out of service.
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TikTok users were horrified, with one person saying: "If a person next to me on a plane dies and y'all try to leave them next to me I will literally jump out of the window."
Another person agreed, adding: "Just know I'm sitting on someone's lap if there are no more seats."
One woman previously explained what happened when her husband passed away on a long haul Air New Zealand flight between Los Angeles and Auckland.
She said: "When he would not wake up I got a flight steward who then went and fetched a passenger who was a doctor.
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";He performed the usual signs of life tests and declared him deceased approximately four hours prior to landing.
"He stayed in his sleeper seats covered with a blanket for the rest of the journey and I lay beside him and held him until we landed."
There is also a name for dead bodies on a plane - Jim Wilson.
According to Sara Marsden, the Editor in Chief for US Funerals Online, American Airlines even have a dedicated help desk for funeral homes that they call the American Airlines Jim Wilson Service.
The nickname allows transport services or undertakers to call about a dead body without anyone overhearing, and the name comes from the crates that are used to transport the bodies.
The Alcor 1997 Stabilization and Transport Manual explains that Jim Wilson Trays are often used as the shipping container and are packed with ice to preserve the human remains.
Other airlines simply call the dead bodies HR, an abbreviation for human remains.
In 2019, horrified plane passengers were grounded with a dead body for two hours after staff brought the wrong-sized steps for paramedics to get on board.
Airport sources said there was a “comedy of errors” as paramedics were forced to crawl on to the Air New Zealand plane bound for Hong Kong, which was diverted to Australia.
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In a , one person said: "We send full bodies on planes a lot. Some in caskets, some not.
"Twice in the seven years I've been doing this has 'fluid' leaked out of the boxes the bodies are in and got all over the luggage."
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