- This must’ve been absolutely horrendous for everybody on board.
The bad thing about airplanes is that once they’re in the air, you can’t get out. That means if there’s a person with a bad cough or a screaming baby on board, you’re stuck for the next few hours.
Yet, both of those sound like delightful scenarios compared to someone spewing blood out of every orifice in his head.
Speaking of which, don’t read any further if you’re sensitive to gruesome medical conditions. Or at least don’t say we didn’t warn you.
A recent cross-continental flight from Thailand to Germany turned into a nightmare when a passenger suffered a bizarre medical episode on board. The unidentified man had already looked sick when he boarded the plane, but things got much worse soon after the plane took off.
His condition quickly deteriorated and the man began to bleed profusely out of his nose and mouth. The captain turned the plane around but by the time it landed back in Thailand, it was too late.
The man was dead, and everyone else on board was surely hoping they’d missed this flight.
The Man’s Not Fine
The fateful Lufthansa flight, LH773, was headed from Bangkok, Thailand, to Munich, Germany on February 8. One couple boarding the plane consisted of nurse Karin Missfelder, 55, and her husband, Martin, 53.
The Missfelders detailed their harrowing experience to the Swiss news outlet Blick.
As they boarded the Airbus A380, Mrs. Missfelder took note of a fellow passenger sitting in the row in front of them. Her medical experience told her the man, identified only as a 63-year-old German, was not alright.
“He had cold sweats, was breathing much too quickly, and was already lethargic,” Mrs. Missfelder recalled.
Yet, the man looked miserable enough that you didn’t need to be a medical professional to realize he wasn’t feeling well. The flight attendants noticed his condition, too, and asked if the man was good to fly.
According to the woman accompanying the man, identified as a Filipina, the couple had to run to make it onto the flight. She explained that the man was merely exhausted.
According to the Missfelders, the flight crew was hesitant to allow the man to remain on board. Yet, they relented in the end and allowed the man to stay on the plane.
With that, the flight took off.
‘Absolute Horror’
As the plane gained altitude, the man’s condition only seemed to get worse. Mrs. Missfelder said that soon after takeoff, the captain asked over the PA system whether there was a doctor on board.
A young Polish man reported to the crew, identifying himself as a doctor. Yet, he did little more than ask the man how he was feeling and take his pulse.
It’s unclear whether he was a medical doctor or a doctor in the sense of a “doctor of art history.” Yet, he told the crew the man was fine.
The crew reportedly gave the man a cup of chamomile tea to help him relax. Soon afterward, however, the horror began.
Mr. Missfelder said that the man sitting in front of them began to spit in one of the plane’s barf bags. A couple of minutes later, he was spitting blood.
And then he began gushing what Mr. Missfelder described as “liters of blood” out of his mouth and nose. The blood quickly filled the bag, spraying all over the seats and walls.
“It was absolute horror, everyone was screaming,” Mr. Missfelder said.
Finally, the man fell limp. According to Mrs. Missfelder, the flight crew immediately began attempting to resuscitate him and kept working at it for a half hour — although it was clear he was gone.
“It was dead quiet on board,” she said.
‘I Didn’t Want to Get Involved’
After the flight crew realized the man would not be getting up again, they took him to the back of the plane. Soon after, the captain announced the plane would be returning to Bangkok due to a death on board.
The Missfelders said they were not happy with how Lufthansa handled the situation once the flight landed back in Bangkok.
“Nobody cared about us, we waited for two hours. There was no care team there, nobody,” said Mr. Missfelder.
“The fact that Lufthansa has no measures for cases like this, that no one cares about around 30 traumatized passengers standing around, is unacceptable.”
Yet, annoyed by the lack of care as the Missfelders were, they said they felt much worse for the now lonely woman who had accompanied the man.
“She stood there all alone and listless, and had to endure all the formalities,” Mr. Missfelder recalled.
Mrs. Missfelder, however, partially blames herself for the tragedy. After all, she is a nurse.
“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,” she lamented.