Isle seat, window seat or next to corpse?

Passenger deaths on airliners received renewed attention last winter when a 44-year-old woman died on a flight from Haiti to New York.

Actually, hundreds of people have died on planes in recent years.

It can be a traumatizing experience for family members and fellow passengers who are forced to take a close-up look at frailty and death and share their journey in close quarters with a corpse.

"It's one of the most overwhelmingly emotional situations possible," said Heidi MacFarlane, a spokeswoman for MedAire, a company that has doctors available on the ground to advise flight crews in a medical emergency. "When you're the one sitting next to the remains, it can be shocking and upsetting."

If the person dies, the crew often throws a blanket over the corpse or puts it in a body bag, an item routinely kept on some planes.

The dead passenger is sometimes placed on the floor in a galley area, or kept buckled in his or her seat, since a corpse cannot be allowed to block certain emergency exits.

Pilots may consider making an emergency landing, but often they keep going.

Airlines are not required to track or report the medical incidents they handle, so an exact tally of in-flight deaths is hard to find. But fatalities and serious illnesses on planes are rare when compared to the large number of people who fly.

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