It’s been a rather odd week in regards to airport related news as we’ve seen three news articles about three separate people dying at an airport or on a flight this week. And none of the incidents sounded like daily business:
- Death I: British woman dies in Turkish airport
- Death II: Man dies on flight to Dublin
- Death III: Woman dies on plane at Auckland airport
- Airport greets arriving passengers with an adult movie
First up on Monday we heard a bizarre story through the Daily Mail reporting that a former BBC journalist was found hanged in a toilet cubicle at a Turkish airport. Jacky Sutton, an international development worker, was found dead at Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport (IST) after missing a connecting flight to Erbil in Iraq. After early suspicions of foul play and after being granted access by Turkish Police to a dossier of evidence on Ms Sutton’s death, her family say they are satisfied no other parties were involved in her death, quoted ABC News on Friday.
Then, one day later on Tuesday the Daily Mail reported of a man dropping dead after biting a fellow passenger onboard an Aer Lingus flight to Dublin. The flight from Lisbon was forced to divert to Cork Airport (ORK) after the man became agitated and violent and had to be restrained. The post-mortem exam is to be carried out in an attempt to establish if the man suffered some form of a seizure or had an underlying medical condition or if there was another reason for his condition.
Death number 3 this week occurred in New Zealand: There the NZ Herald reported that an 81-year-old Fijian woman who died of a suspected heart attack at Auckland International Airport (AKL) this morning was in “good spirits” when a family member dropped her off. The woman, whose name has not been released, was returning home to Fiji after spending a few months visiting family in New Zealand, Auckland Police sergeant Peter Hunia said. The woman was sitting on board Fiji Airways flight 430 to Suva, which was scheduled to take off at 7am, when her breathing became laboured. Cabin crew alerted the airport’s emergency services team, Police and St John. Medics removed the woman from the plane and took her to an airport terminal where they attempted to recover her for about an hour. She died at the scene about 8am, he said. The plane left for Fiji at 8:15am.
To finish the week, we’re thankfully moving to a lighter subject. According to USA Today arriving passengers got an unexpected surprise at the checked luggage carousel at Portugal’s Lisbon Airport (LIS) earlier this week. An X-rated film began playing on the TV screens in the baggage area in the wee hours of Monday morning, leaving little to the imagination for travelers standing nearby. One of the passengers decided to capture the incident on video and posted the clip to social media. In the video, surprised passengers – some laughing – point to the screen while the graphic adult film plays in the carousel area. The video played for “several minutes” around 3 a.m. Monday morning,” Yahoo! News reports. A Lisbon Airport spokesman confirmed the incident to Yahoo!, saying “a TV was tuned (without sound) to a Portuguese generalist channel (this is not a porn channel), which at the time ran a soft porn movie. The situation was corrected promptly. There were no complaints. We will ensure that these situations are not repeated.”
That’s all for this week – safe travels!
[Title photo: “Ataturk Airport overview Karakas” by Ercan Karakaş – http://www.jetphotos.net/viewphoto.php?id=6225683&nseq=92. Licensed under GFDL via Commons.]
