What Happens If Someone Dies On A Plane?

Flying is, for many people, a fearful experience, alongside the stress of traveling, the confined space, and the many common annoyances of airports. Flight safety has been in the news lately as several serious crashes took place over the last several weeks, with insiders saying that firings at the Federal Aviation Administration planned by Trump and Musk are a threat to air safety.

This is certainly not a calm time to fly – so consider the recent news of an Australian couple who had a deceased person put next to them on a flight from Melbourne to Doha, the capital of Qatar. The death of a fellow passenger can be harrowing, even if they are a stranger, but there are policies in place for what happens next. It’s good that there are because it is not an impossibly rare occurrence.

Is there a doctor on board?

According to a 2021 review published in The American Journal of Emergency Medicine, the global incidence of in-flight medical emergencies is 18.2 events per million passengers, and the mortality rate is 0.21 per million passengers.

According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), 2025 will see the number of airline passengers in 2025 surpass five billion for the first time. If the mortality rate stays the same, this means 1,000 people will die while flying this year.

Often, when a medical emergency happens, the plane will be diverted to the nearest possible airport. Unfortunately, airports are not equally spaced on flight routes, so the next one might be hours away. The cabin crew is trained to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and there might be medical professionals on board, but sometimes that is not enough. It is also possible that a person dies without a visible medical emergency.

Dealing with a death on board

In informal conversations, some people say they would refuse to sit next to a dead body, while others don’t have any problem with it – some even joke that they’d rather sit next to a deceased person than a baby for a long flight. Each response hints at the simple fact that it is not easy to deal with death on the ground, let alone trapped in a metal tube far up in the sky – people will have different reactions, which might depend on their culture, upbringing, personal feelings about mortality, and more.

The IATA guidelines for death on board express a general plan to what to do and invite airlines to supplement with specific criteria in addition to these recommendations. If CPR has been continued for 30 minutes together with the use of an onboard Automated External Defibrillator (AED) and there are no signs of life, the person may be presumed dead.

The guidelines suggest placing the deceased in a body bag, if the airline uses them, zipping them up to the neck and closing their eyes. Alternatively, they are to be covered in a blanket up to their neck. Ideally, they would be moved to a seat with as few people around as possible. If flights are full, this might not happen, and the person might be left in their original seat.

This is where the consideration might become contentious: Some people might feel unease or horror at sitting next to a dead person. Ultimately, their placement will be at the crew’s discretion. 

Ultimately, a death in the air is not easy for anyone involved, so the best one can do is to know and follow the rules to deal with the unfortunate situation at hand.

All “explainer” articles are confirmed by fact checkers to be correct at time of publishing. Text, images, and links may be edited, removed, or added to at a later date to keep information current.  

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