The Ideal Airplane Seatmate?
It seems that a Swedish woman named Lena got on an airplane expecting a typical flight. She was looking forward to a vacation with a friend in Tanzania. When she settled in for her red-eye flight, Lena realized that another passenger on the flight didn't look well. He was sweating and acted as if he were in pain. The man, in fact, appeared to be having seizures. This was before the plane took off mind you.
Even though the flight attendants were aware of the situation, the flight took off as scheduled. Now if I'm a passenger on a plane, I'm generally happy when my plane takes off on time, but I hope I'd be understanding if we were delayed while they assisted the man having seizures to deplane. But that's not what happened.
The flight took off on time, and at some point during the flight, the man...stopped having seizures. He stopped doing anything at all. He, in fact, died. Medical folks were rounded up from among the passengers, but despite their best attempts, they could not revive him. They laid him out on the 3 seats across the aisle from Lena. She asked to move, but they said there were no other places.
Later she said,“Of course it was unpleasant, but I am not a person who makes a fuss.” Actually she didn't say that because she's Swedish. She said some Swedish words that roughly translate to that, but you get the point.
As I look at this, I can't help but wonder. Wouldn't this guy be pretty much the perfect person to have sitting across from you? I mean, yeah dead and all, but think about it. He's not going to tell you his life story while you're trying to read the in-flight magazine. He's not going to eat disgusting food that he brought with him. He's not going to hog the armrest. He's not going to drink 10 of those little bottles of liquor and get noisy and obnoxious.
(I once took a red-eye from San Francisco to Atlanta, and the two men behind me drank and talked loudly until we were somewhere over Arkansas.)
Now, what with dying and all, due to certain natural...occurrences at death, he may smell as bad as a baby in need of a diaper change, but he'll be much quieter. Quiet just has to count for something. So, yeah. I think I'll take the seat across the aisle from the dead guy. Not next to him...no. No, just...no.
Now the end of this story is that when our Swedish damsel in distress got home from her week-long vacation in Tanzania, she asked the airline to compensate her for her ordeal. She received half of her plane fair as a refund. This roughly translates to $710 U.S.
Is that enough? Would you have asked for compensation? If so, how much?
My not-very-humble opinion is that she should have at least received her complete fare back. Good grief, the airline should be thanking its lucky stars that they had a Swede and not an American in that seat. The American would have had his/her lawyer on the phone before the body was cold, setting up a lawsuit.
ReplyDeleteLori K., who is a Swedish-American
The whole situation is just icky!
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