‘ABSOLUTE HORROR’: Passenger dies on flight after coughing up blood

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It was a frightening scene for passengers on a flight from Bangkok to Germany earlier this month.

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A 63-year-old German man died aboard a Lufthansa flight after he coughed up litres of blood, according to one witness.

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The man, who was travelling with a female companion on Feb. 8, quickly boarded the plane despite not feeling well.

“A flight attendant then reacted and asked him if he was OK,” Karin Missfelder, a nursing specialist at a Zurich hospital, told Swiss newspaper Blick. “She was very worried.”

The nurse called over a flight attendant and said a doctor needed to take a look at the visibly sick man.

“He had cold sweats, was breathing much too quickly, and was already apathetic,” she said.

The captain of the plane called for a doctor. A young Polish physician who didn’t speak English briefly checked the man’s pulse and gave the OK for the flight to depart.

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“They then gave him a little chamomile tea, but he already spit blood into the bag that his wife held out to him,” husband Martin Missfelder said.

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After the plane was in the air, the man’s condition dramatically worsened. He continued to spit in a bag until litres of blood came gushing out of his mouth and nose.

“It was absolute horror, everyone was screaming,” he said.

Resuscitation efforts were made by the flight attendants for about half an hour, but it was too late.

The man was carried into the galley and the plane was forced to turn back to Bangkok. The pilot announced the man’s death on the loudspeaker.

“It was dead quiet on board,” the nurse said.

She blamed herself for not intervening earlier so that the man could have been given better care at a local hospital.

“The man looked so bad, I don’t understand why the captain took off. I should have intervened, but I saw that a doctor was looking after him, so I didn’t want to get involved.”

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