Woman sits next to corpse on flight

Many of us have put up with flying in the close company of less-than-desirable passengers, but probably none of our experiences have been as bad as that of the Swedish woman who sat next to a corpse.

Swedish newspaper Expressen recently reported that Lena Petterson, a journalist with Radio Sweden, sat next to a dead man on a Kenya Airways flight from Amsterdam to Tanzania. When she boarded the plane at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, Petterson noticed that the man sitting across the aisle from her was in a seriously bad way. Despite the man’s critical condition, the plane took off, but the man died mid-way through the overnight flight to Dar Es Salaam.

Cabin crew wrapped the deceased man in a blanket, laid him across three seats and moved some passengers away from him, but not the unfortunate Petterson. She said that his legs stuck out across the aisle, only inches from her. “Of course it was unpleasant, but I am not a person who makes a fuss”, she said. Kenya Airways refunded Petterson half her ticket price after she complained about the incident.