Death on a plane

Flying Cathay Pacific is a wonderful experience (not withstanding my little tiff regarding luggage issues), and they did not disappoint in my non-stop journey from Hong Kong to Los Angeles. The movies were fun, legroom plentiful, and the food quite pleasing. My experience in flying from LA to Chicago, however, was a little different.

There was a death on our plane.

We had boarded our Southwest flight without much trouble. As a matter of fact the flight was relatively empty, and passengers were spaced nicely apart. It was just as the doors to the plane were shut that the flight attendant came on the PA system, and asked if everyone had their teeth with them.

As an airline known for its quirkiness, I waited for the Southwest employee to deliver the punchline, but none was forthcoming. Apparently someone had left their dentures in the bathroom, and wasn't claiming them. With suppressed snickers, the passengers settled back into their seats, thinking that the embarrassed owner of the teeth would probably just discreetly approach the flight attendant at a later time. It was ten minutes or so later that there was a commotion three two rows behind me.

The plane had begun taxiing to the runway, and the attendants were checking everyone's seatbelts. A gentleman sitting in an aisle seat two rows behind me was asleep, and not responding to the attendants. Upon progressively rougher shaking, the gentleman promptly keeled to a side. Within a span of a few minutes, the plane was rerouted back to the gate and cordoned off by police squad cars, while the flight attendant lay the unconscious man out in the aisle, ripped off his shirt, and began applying CPR. A doctor from among the passengers began to help, and when even this did not help, the flight crew applied shocks from the plane defribrillator. EMT personnel arrived soon thereafter and took over, but it was clear to everyone on that small plane that this gentleman had passed away.

The dead body was carried away, and as it passed by I thought how the man did not look old at all. Dressed in a contemporary suit, wearing a crimson shirt without a tie, the man was probably in his early sixties. He had obviously boarded the flight fine, had used the bathroom (forgetting his dentures), and returned to his seat, where he had just ... died.

The reaction from people on the plane wasn't what I had expected. Perhaps I've seen too many movies, and I was waiting for hysterical women and crying children to raise a ruckus, while belligerent men argued for the best steps to be taken. There was none of that. Instead, there was just shock and silence - the mothers on the plane hugged their children closer, and the poor kid that shared the dead man's row huddled by his window seat.

The police came and went, and most interestingly, ground staff came to completely dismantle the seat cushions of the deceased man and replace them with new ones. Once all procedures were complete, the plane took off again, two hours late. No one cared. After all, as the captain said, our inconvenience was minor compared to the gentleman who had been carried off the plane. It was sad, to think that people waiting for this man in Chicago would be met with devastating news. Sadder still was thinking the lonely way this man had died, surrounded by strangers who knew nothing about him. Still, as I glanced up halfway through the flight I saw mothers rocking their babies to sleep, children sharing jokes, men watching movies on their laptops, and women reading while listening to music on their iPods. No one could have said that anything out of the ordinary had happened a little while ago.

Life carried on, as it always does.