A Ryanair aircraft travelling from Tirana, Albania to Manchester, England was compelled to execute an emergency landing at London Stansted Airport on November 10, 2024. This unfortunate event took place due to a lethal medical crisis that a British passenger suffered mid-flight. Despite the valiant resuscitation attempts by both the crew and fellow passengers, the man was declared dead upon arrival.
The Ryanair flight, RK8293, departed from Tirana at 5:55 p.m. local time and was over France, having already flown past Switzerland, when the passenger started showing signs of extreme discomfort. “Everything went into chaos,” a witness recounted, portraying how passengers quickly responded as the man began convulsing and soon after ceased breathing.
Three passengers, who had first aid knowledge, and two flight attendants performed CPR on the man in the plane’s aisle for approximately 25 minutes. In a desperate bid to revive the man, the crew also utilized the aircraft’s defibrillator.
A representative from the East of England Ambulance Service conveyed that they dispatched an ambulance, a Hazardous Area Response Team vehicle, a paramedic car, and the Essex and Herts Air Ambulance to Stansted Airport on that Sunday evening. This was done in response to the reports of a man facing a medical crisis on the aircraft.
Following the emergency landing, passengers deboarded as officials handled the situation. Roughly 90 minutes later, passengers reboarded the aircraft, now staffed with a new crew, to proceed to Manchester.
This incident marks the second in-flight death on a Ryanair flight in the year 2024. Earlier in January, another British passenger passed away during a flight from Malaga, Spain to Manchester, resulting in an emergency landing in Bordeaux, France.
A number of other in-flight fatalities have been recorded in 2024. In one case, Raiznal Farzad Khalik, a 41-year-old U.S. citizen, passed away from an unspecified medical condition on a Fiji Airways flight from Nadi, Fiji to San Francisco, California, in spite of immediate aid from an onboard physician and the cabin crew.
In another case, Turkish Airlines pilot İlçehin Pehlivan passed away mid-flight from Seattle, Washington to Istanbul, Turkey, necessitating an emergency landing at New York’s JFK International Airport.
While these types of emergencies are still relatively rare, they underscore the unpredictable nature of health risks during air travel and the difficulty of handling potentially life-threatening incidents mid-flight with limited medical resources available at 30,000 feet.
