A Ryanair flight to Manchester was forced to make an emergency landing in London after a passenger suffered a medical emergency mid-air and later died onboard.
Flight RK8293 from Tirana, Albania to Manchester touched down at Stansted Airport on Sunday evening (10 November) after “chaos” erupted in the cabin.
According to FlightRadar, the Ryanair journey had been scheduled to arrive in the northern city at 8.10pm before the flight was forced to divert shortly before 8pm due to a medical emergency.
A fellow passenger told the Manchester Evening News that a man started “having convulsions” before passengers trained in first aid performed CPR in the aisle.
“He stopped breathing and everything went into chaos,” the witness added.
Two members of the cabin crew reportedly used the defibrillator on the man for 25 minutes before the flight made an emergency landing at London Stansted.
A spokesperson for the East of England Ambulance Service told The Independent that one ambulance, one Hazardous Area Response Team vehicle, one paramedic car and Essex and Herts Air Ambulance responded to the scene at Stansted Airport.
“Sadly, despite the best efforts of all involved, the man had died at the scene,” they added.
The flight later continued its journey to Manchester without the passengers travelling with the man.
The Independent has contacted Ryanair for comment.
Last week, the family of a man who had an asthma attack and died on a British Airways flight from London to New York sued the carrier, claiming that flight attendants never even made an announcement asking if there was a doctor onboard.
The plane was roughly an hour out from landing when Shimon Breuer, 25, began to have difficulty breathing last year, according to a wrongful death lawsuit his brother filed in Brooklyn federal court.
It says a panicked Breuer “gasped for air” and “begged for help,” but that the cabin crew “failed to provide… prompt and proper medical attention,” resulting in his death.
Breuer’s brother Hershel, who is also the executor of his sibling’s estate, is asking for unspecified damages to be determined by a jury. A court date has not yet been set.
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