That One Time Someone DIED On My Flight!

Crazy things happen when you travel as much as I do and in my case SUPER crazy things have happened. I must say that I’ve seen a few abnormal things in my past flights that would probably make a person think twice before traveling again or wanting to be a flight attendant.

Sure, small airplane accidents happen all the time, we’ve all sat next to a crying baby, a person who reclined his seat to far back to breathe, had our luggage lost or we didn’t get the special meal we ordered, most of us have experienced these airplane accidents at least once in our life. But how about hearing the pilot tell the plane that we ran out of GAS! Or possibly having your baby sister almost die on a flight, flying above a country during war, while bombs are going off or probably the weirdest, having someone DIE on your flight!

These are airplane accidents you never even knew existed. These have all happened to me, some I’ve written about and others I’ll write about in the future, but for now, let’s talk about this crazy story, someone died on my flight!

A couple of years ago, I was living in Baltimore/Washington DC area for work, when I was a corporate trainer for a big sales company. Due to my flexible schedule with training, I also got to fly out for my little brother’s college graduation at Chico State in Northern California.

I was super excited to see my family that I hadn’t seen in a long time and I left BWI airport early morning. Now normally, when I have an early flight, I usually tend to not sleep the night before because I’m already used to staying up late and I’d rather sleep on the flight. So that’s exactly what I did, I pulled an all nighter and by the time I got to the airport I was an official walking zombie! I felt like I hadn’t slept in days. My head was pounding, I was hungry and exhausted. The moment I found my seat on the plane, I fell asleep.

I find it funny/odd that sometimes there are 16hr flights that I can’t fall asleep in and at other times there are flights that are only an hour and I fall asleep immediately. This flight was meant to be a non-stop flight and was suppose to take about 6hrs.

Now, a few years before this incident happened, probably 16 years ago, my little sister almost died on the plane on an international flight, when she cracked her head open and she was only 3 at the time and needed stitches! Crazy, I know! It was a pretty dramatic experience, but because of that, I already knew the signs of an emergency on a plane.

While I was sleeping I heard an announcement over the plane speaker asking if there was any doctors on board. While half asleep I thought to myself “that’s weird…I wonder what happened”. But didn’t make much of it, since you never really know how serious things are. They always make it seem so casual, so I fell back asleep.

Then probably about 30mins after, the flight attended asked if there were any doctors, nurses or military personnel on board and if so, to please make their way to the back of the plane. This for sure, was something serious at this point! I was so worried, confused and tired and nothing happened for another 45mins, so I went back to sleep again #sleepyhead.

Then it happened!

The pilot went on the speaker to announce that due to an emergency with one of our passengers, we had to land the plane at the nearest airport.

This was crazy! No one knew what the hell was going on!? The entire plane, panicked and it seemed as if everyone was talking to the person next to them on what could have possibly happened, but we still had NO idea what was going on!

At the time, I had no idea where we were going to land, after landing I went to maps on my phone, clicked current location, zoomed out to find out we have landed in Kansas. Oddly enough, that’s where my brother picked to go to grad school the following year.

Every passenger at this point was up, confused and curious. It took a pretty long time until we landed and the paramedics came on the plane with a stretcher. Everyone was still in shock and confused because no one was telling us what was going on.

FINALLY after another about 20mins of waiting, we saw the paramedics pulling a body on a stretcher with a blanket over it’s face!!!

OMG WHAT JUST HAPPENED?!?!?

We were all in disbelief!

Someone seriously just DIED on our flight!

People were even more confused at this point, upset and shocked.

The pilot had made another announcement 15mins after they took out the body and told us all, as general as he could, without freaking people out even more, what just happened. It turned out to be an elderly person, but they never said if it was a heart attack or something else. The pilot also added that we would have to wait an additional hour on the plane before taking off, so that they can fill out the proper paperwork and then another 30mins to take off.

This is probably the craziest thing that’s ever happened to me on a plane and hopefully, I’ll be happy, if it stays that way.

I did make it to my brother’s graduation and had a great time, but was totally iffy about getting on that plane back home.

What has been the craziest thing you’ve ever experienced on a plane?