‘Sleeping’ Woman, 73, on Flight Discovered to be DEAD

Passengers on board a British Airways flight were shocked after they discovered that a 73-year-old woman who was believed to be asleep during the trip, was discovered to be dead.

The woman remained still when the Thursday flight from London to Nice landed and passengers began to collect their carry-on luggage to get off the plane, French news outlet The Connexion reported.

Passengers then were alarmed to find that she was unresponsive after attempts to wake her up and alerted the flight crew, who called emergency services. 

Paramedics tried to revive her, but they were unsuccessful. She was pronounced dead around 10 p.m. local time that day. 

The woman is suspected to have died from a heart attack, according to Connexion.

British Airways confirmed to the Daily Mail that the elderly woman “passed away on a flight from Heathrow to Nice.” 

In a similar incident in June, a British man died on a flight from London to New York after he had an asthma attack and dropped his inhaler, according to the New York Post. He died after failed attempts by the flight crew to revive him.

Though in-flight deaths are not tracked by the FAA or publicly reported by airlines, they are not uncommon, according to an article by wealth management expert John M. Jennings. 

The New England Journal of Medicine released a 2013 study examining in-flight medical emergency calls from five domestic and international airlines between 2008 and 2010 and found that the medical call center received 11,920 calls over that period, including 36 reported deaths.