How would you feel if you were on a long international flight and a woman dropped dead right there in the aisle next to your seat? And what if the flight crew decided to put the dead woman’s corpse in the seat right next to yours and make you stay in that seat for the four hours that were remaining on that flight? Because that is exactly what one couple says happened to them on a recent Qatar Airways flight.
The couple, Mitchell Ring and Jennifer Colin, felt pretty much how just about anyone would feel about being put in that situation: they were upset.
“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 in an interview earlier this week, adding, “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 counseling. I don’t really know how I feel and would like to speak to somebody to make sure I’m alright.”
At the time of that interview, no one at Ring and Colin said no one at Qatar Airways had reached out to them. All the airline had done to that point was issue a general statement that read, “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.”
It’s unclear what Qatar Airways policies and procedures are for dealing with a death on a flight, but the International Air Transport Association (IATA) states that a deceased person should be moved “to a seat – if available, one with few other passengers nearby,” not sit the dead body in the seat next to a passenger and not allow them to move.
Even worse, Ring said that when the Qatar Airways plane landed, the crew told him to stay in his seat while authorities came to retrieve the woman’s corpse. One of the items on the IATA’s list of what a flight crew should do with a dead body is to “disembark other passengers first” upon landing, then have authorities retrieve the corpse.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XCCVIPrQEA
On Friday, Qatar Airways doubled down on their claims that the flight crew did nothing wrong.
“It is an unfortunate reality that unexpected deaths do sometimes occur on board aircraft across the aviation industry, and our crew are highly trained to deal with these situations with as much respect and dignity as possible,” NBC News reports Qatar Airways said on Friday in another statement. “After an internal review, it is clear that Qatar Airways cabin crew acted quickly, appropriately and professionally at all times in line with training and industry standard practice.”
The airline also claimed that passengers were moved to other seats and a crew member sat with the corpse for the rest of the flight.
“We have been in direct contact with the family of the deceased as well as other passengers who were directly affected by this difficult situation and have offered emotional support and compensation,” Qatar Airways continued in its statement.
The post Qatar Airways Defends Making Passengers Sit Next To Corpse For 4 Hours appeared first on BroBible.
Qatar Airways Defends Making Passengers Sit Next To Corpse For 4 Hours
Pinoy Human Rights
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