Everyone has seen a movie with the clichéd scene. A passenger slumps forward, and a flight attendant gets on the public address system and asks, “Is there a doctor on board?”
It’s not just a tense movie set-up; deaths do occur in mid-air. A unidentified woman died on a Virgin Australia flight from Brisbane to Melbourne on July 29. There are almost no details about her identity or what may have ailed her. Sparse news reports say the woman collapsed at about 9:30 a.m. local time, and members of the flight crew did CPR on her until the plane could land at 10:15 a.m.
While the passenger was taken to a hospital when the plane made an emergency landing at Tullamarine airport 45 minutes after the incident, she was declared dead.
How often do medical emergencies happen in mid-air, and what is the protocol for dealing with them. According to the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), a medical emergency occurs on one out of 600 flights on average. But remember that even uncommon events add up to big numbers when you consider how many incidents that adds up to every year. Given all the flights criss-crossing the globe, that’s about 44,000 in-flight medical events annually.
Many of the recorded medical incidents can be, or start out as, fairly mild: nausea, fainting, and difficulty breathing. An NEJM study reported that relatively few in-flight medical problems are serious enough to cause a plane to divert or make an emergency landing. Breathing problems, passing out, and gastrointestinal distress made of the bulk of reported medical in-flight incidents. In most cases, the intervening volunteer turned out to be a medical doctor, and one-fourth of passengers experiencing a medical problem are evaluated at a hospital once the plane lands.
But what about when it’s the pilot struck with a medical emergency? That’s when it gets scary, but that’s also why nearly all commercial flights have a minimum of two pilots in the cockpit at all times. In 2023, the pilot of a Southwest Airlines flight reported stomach pain and then passed out. The cabin crew removed him from the flight deck and gave emergency medical care in the back of the plane. Fortunately, a pilot from another airline who was “type-rated” to fly the Boeing 737 responded to an announcement and helped the co-pilot land the plane safely.