A Lufthansa flight from Bangkok to Munich had to be turned around after a man showing signs of poor health died shortly after take-off.
German news outlet Blick reports the incident occurred on Lufthansa flight LH773, an A380 Airbus, at 11:40pm Thursday night.
Karin Missfelder, who was on the flight, told Blick she was sitting diagonally from the 63-year-old and his wife and watched the incident unfold.
She said that when the man boarded, “he had cold sweats, was breathing much too quickly, and was already apathetic”.
The sickly passenger told Missfelder he and his wife had to run to the plane, which is why he didn’t look healthy.
“A flight attendant then reacted and asked him if he was OK. She was very worried,” Missfelder said. "Despite this, they still allowed the man to fly."
Missfelder, who is a trained nurse, told a flight attendant that the man was not in a good way and needed to be seen by a doctor.
The captain came to look, and upon noticing the passenger’s poor condition, he called for a doctor over the loudspeaker.
“A young, around 30-year-old man from Poland with poor English looked at the man."
She said the doctor checked his pulse, asked how he was feeling and gave him some tea.
“But he already spit blood into the bag that his wife held out to him,” Missfelder said.
After the plane took off, the man's condition started to worsen “dramatically”.
After spitting into the bag, a gush of blood flowed out of his mouth and nose. “It was absolute horror. Everyone was screaming,” Missfelder said. She added there were "litres of blood" which flowed from the man.
She said he lost so much blood that the walls were covered. After an “amateurish” attempt at resuscitating the man, he died.
Midfielder said: “It was dead quiet on board.”
The man was reportedly carried into the plane's galley, and the aircraft was turned around.
When asked by Blick about the incident, Lufthansa confirmed someone had died on the plane but could give “no further details”.
Missfelder described chaotic scenes at the airport, saying: “Nobody looked after us, we waited two hours.
“There was no care team there, nobody. We all had to go to a counter, where we received a 10-franc voucher.”
She said the worst thing was that the wife of the man had to go back through customs by herself.
“She stood there all alone and apathetic and had to endure all the formalities."
She expects the airline to apologise to the man’s wife and the other passengers.
“The fact that Lufthansa has no measures in his case, that no one cares about around 30 traumatised passengers around, is unacceptable."
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