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A passenger on board a Lufthansa flight from Thailand to Germany died Thursday, after his fellow travelers watched in horror as blood gushed out of his mouth and nose.
The unidentified 63-year-old German man was seen boarding the Airbus A380 in Bangkok shortly before midnight visibly sick, with “cold sweats” and “breathing much too quickly,” Karin Missfelder recounted to Swiss German outlet Blick.
At first, she said, his wife claimed they had to rush to catch the flight — which is why he wasn’t feeling well.
But after watching the man for a few moments, Missfelder — who is a nursing specialist at University Hospital in Zurich — said she informed a flight attendant that he needed to be examined by a doctor.
A young Polish man answered the call, but he reportedly only asked the man how he was feeling, felt his pulse and said he was OK.
“They gave him a little chamomile tea, but he already spit blood into the bag that his wife held out to him,” said Missfelder’s husband, Martin.
Soon, blood started spilling out of his mouth and nose.
“It was absolute horror, everyone was screaming,” Martin said.
He claimed that the man lost liters of blood, some of which splattered the walls of the plane.
For about half an hour afterward, flight attendants tried to perform CPR — even as the nurse said she knew it was hopeless.
When he finally went still and the captain announced the man’s death, “it was dead quiet on board,” she said.
Staff then carried the man’s body into the galley of the plane, as it turned and headed back to Thailand.
“Although immediate and comprehensive first aid measures were taken by the crew and a doctor on board, the passenger died during the flight,” a Lufthansa spokesperson confirmed in a statement.
“Our thoughts are with the relatives of the deceased passenger. We also regret the inconvenience caused to the passengers of this flight,” the spokesperson said.
Flight data show it left Bangkok at 11:50 p.m. Thursday and landed back in Thailand at 8:28 a.m. Friday.
There, the passengers said they had to wait two hours without any guidance from Lufthansa before they were finally booked on another flight to Germany, with a stopover in Hong Kong.
But for Missfelder, the worst part was that the man’s wife now had to go through customs alone.
She said she regrets that she did not try to help.
“I should have intervened, but I saw that a doctor was looking after him, so I didn’t want to get involved,” she said, noting that “the man looked so bad, I don’t understand why the captain took off.”
