As the long line of passengers filed down the aisle of a Southwest airliner headed to Denver just a few weeks ago, I tried not to get my hopes up that the middle seat next to me would remain vacant. What a delight that would be! No jockeying for who gets the armrest. No distractions from the movie my too-close neighbor was watching on his laptop. No worries that I was trying to wrestle the wrong seatbelt across my lap.
Best of all, I would have a place to keep my phone and purse and book and snacks within easy reach instead of shoved into my backpack under the seat in front of me.
For once, I got lucky. The plane would have a few empty seats, the flight attendant (who, as an added bonus, didn’t crack even one lame joke while she drilled us on what to do in case of an unplanned water landing) said. The young woman occupying the window seat on my row gave me a smile and a thumbs-up as we settled in for our three-hour flight
But we weren’t even at cruising altitude before I reminded myself not to celebrate the empty seat beside me just yet. I remembered a horrifying news story from last February, which you may remember, too. About ten hours into a fourteen-hour flight from Australia to Qatar, a female passenger exited the restroom and fell over dead.
Apparently and thank goodness, such an occurrence is rare. But airlines have contingency plans in place should such an unfortunate thing happen. Cabin crews are trained not only to serve passengers but also in crowd control and lifesaving. They even have rudimentary mortician training. The prescribed protocol in the event of an in-flight passenger death is to close the corpse’s eyes and place it in a body bag, if one is available. That bag should be stored, if possible, in an out-of-the-way spot.
If possible??? Have you ever seen an empty space big enough for an occupied body bag on an airplane? There wasn’t one on the Qatar flight, so the corpse was placed in the aisle seat next to a couple on Row Four. The dearly departed was buckled in and her body, but not her head, was covered with a blanket. When the plane landed four hours later, the couple beside the corpse wasn’t allowed to leave their seats until medical personnel who had come aboard completed their examination and report. The airline offered no refund for this “inconvenience.”
All of which is enough to make me vow to never again complain about irritating things that happen to me on a plane.
My seatmate on the way home from Denver in 2016 who told me he’d drunk eight beers—eight!–at the airport bar before boarding and who wanted to argue when I confessed I hadn’t voted the same way he did in the recent Presidential election? No complaint.
The teenager who played Candy Crush Saga on her phone all the way from Nashville to Fort Lauderdale with the sound unmuted? No complaint.
The woman directly across the aisle several years ago who noticed I was absorbed in reading “Gone Girl” and proceeded to tell me how much she’d enjoyed it and how she’d recommended to all her friends and then told me how it ended? No complaint.
I won’t even complain about the guy who sat next to me on the short but extraordinarily bumpy flight from Denver to Rapid City, South Dakota last summer who unwrapped the messiest, stinkiest sandwich I’d ever seen or smelled and proceeded to eat the entire thing and then lick his fingers while I sat paralyzed with my face pressed against the airplane window wondering if we were all going to die.
But if somebody was to park a corpse in an empty seat next to me for four hours, I’m not sure I could hold my tongue.
(May 3, 2025)