There has been an increasing number of stories of pilots and flight attendants suffering cardiac arrests and sudden deaths in-flight, and here are some that made it into mainstream media:
A flying instructor died in-flight after suffering a cardiac arrest, but his co-pilot thought he was fooling around (click here).
According to a newly published safety report on the incident, the pilot thought the instructor was pretending to be asleep as the pair flew a circuit near Blackpool Airport in Lancashire, England, on June 29, 2022.
Shortly after takeoff, the instructor’s head rolled back. The pilot knew the 57-year-old instructor well and thought he was just pretending to take a nap. However, when he landed the plane and his co-pilot was still resting on his shoulder and not responding, he realized something was amiss (click here).
A post-mortem examination concluded that the instructor died from acute cardiac failure. He had passed a medical four months earlier. The report found there was no indication that the instructor was unwell.
“People who had spoken to him on the morning of the incident said he was his normal cheerful self and there were no indications that he was feeling unwell,” the report said.
An American Eagle flight 3556 operated by Envoy Air from Chicago to Columbus returned to O’Hare airport on November 20, 2022, after the captain passed out and became incapacitated not long after departure (click here).
Data shows that the flight was only 10 minutes from take-off when the situation arose. The captain in training was subsequently declared dead at the hospital.
Envoy did not comment on the cause of the medical emergency. The Air Line Pilots Association, the union which represents Envoy’s pilots, didn’t comment (click here)
One story reported that the 54 year old pilot, Patrick Ford, had a COVID-19 booster shot 2 days prior, and was feeling “lightheaded and dizzy” during take-off (click here).
A pilot died suddenly during a flight between the Russian cities of Novokuznetsk and St.Petersburg on Sunday (Sep.18, 2022), officials told state-run media (click here)
Authorities told RIA Novosti that the unnamed pilot, identified as a flight commander, felt sick during the trip. The commander died before medical attention could be given to the pilot, officials said. Ikar Airlines is also known as Pegas Fly.
The cause of death of the pilot has not been revealed.
Citilink Indonesia flight – an Airbus A320 carrying more than 100 passengers – had departed from Surabaya’s international airport in East Java province and was headed to Ujung Pandang city in South Sulawesi province on July 21, 2022 (click here)
The pilot, 48 year old Boy Awalia, suffered a health emergency 15 minutes after take-off and was forced to return to the airport before being rushed to a hospital where he later died (click here).
The airline said it had conducted health checks prior to the flight for all crew on duty and that they were “declared fit or airworthy,” according to a statement from Dewa Kadek Rai, the president director of PT Citilink Indonesia.
Capt Nawshad Ataul Quaiyum, a pilot of Biman Bangladesh Airlines, who suffered a massive heart attack while in command of a Muscat-Dhaka flight on August 30, 2021, died in an Indian hospital. He was 44.
Quaiyum was piloting a flight carrying 124 passengers. After he took ill, the plane was taken over by the co-pilot (click here).
Greta Dyrmishi, 24, a cabin crew member for Air Albania, was travelling from Tirana, the Albanian capital, to Essex in the UK, on December 21, 2022 when she suddenly fainted after the plane landed. Paramedics provided CPR but she died (click here).
A post-mortem found that the 24-year-old had died from sudden adult death syndrome (SADS).
A statement issued by Air Albania at the time of the flight attendant’s death said: “On December 21, after disembarking the passengers from our flight to London, one of our cabin crew Greta Dyrmishi had a heart attack.
“Even after all medical assistance was provided immediately, we still lost her.”
Air steward Yasser Saleh Al Yazidi fell ill after the seven and a half hour Gulf Air flight took off from Bahrain en route to Paris (click here).
The pilots were forced to make an emergency landing just a few hours into the journey, in Erbil, Iraq. They had reached 34,000 feet in the air when the crew member suffered the heart attack, the director of Erbil airport said.
Despite the crew member being taken to hospital immediately after landing, Yasser was pronounced dead on arrival.
Notice how many in-flight pilot cardiac arrests and deaths there have been in the second half of 2022, as well as flight attendant deaths.
There have also been a number of unusual helicopter crashes in Canada in 2022.
I fear that we are inching closer to a major airline disaster in 2023, as a result of injuries being suffered by COVID-19 vaccinated pilots.
It is important to note that these are not the only cases of pilots having cardiac arrests in-flight resulting in a crash, as I am aware of other incidents that have not been properly reported in the media.
I have also been in touch with pilots who are deeply concerned about the COVID-19 vaccine injuries that are currently being suffered by their pilot colleagues and what this means for the safety of air travel going forward.
Source: Pilots and flight attendants who recently had cardiac arrests in-flight and “died suddenly”…