Incident of the week #1

One of the most difficult situations to deal with  -  having more passengers taking-off than landing.

This happened this week, on a UTair B757 flight from Bangkok (Thailand) to Novosibirsk (Russia) with 239 passengers on board. The airplane was flying over China when Sergei G.,44,  felt ill, sustained a heart attack and died despite all attempts at resuscitation. The incident happened three hours after take-off and took place in the cockpit - Sergei was a pilot (although non-flying). A cardiologist was among the passengers but her efforts to revive him failed. The captain attempted an emergency landing in the Chinese city of Chengdu but abandoned it because the pilot died before the plane touched down. So they decided to keep flying towards their initial destination in Russia. Sergei was a crew member - a reserve pilot tasked, ironically, with replacing a crew member in case they fall ill. I can´t imagine how difficult it was for the crew to deal with the situation. I mean, on the spot you have to be cool-headed, it just doesn´t matter if you know the person or not - you just do whatever you can and learnt to keep someone alive. But after that.. It´s not like they just flew a couple of hours, it´s a long flight from Chengdu to Novosibirsk (almost 2000 miles / over 3000 km) and the crew has to figure out what to do with the dead body and how/where to secure it for landing. Also during the first stage of rotting - autolysis, the body starts loosing fluids, skin peels off and the muscular tissues become rigid and incapable of contraction. On top of that, they still had 239 passengers to care and to serve during that flight. So I can´t imagine how difficult it was for the entire crew to emotionally cope with it. I hope his family, friends and UTair crew fellows are doing allright.