A couple claims to have travelled for four hours with a corpse next to the plane

BarcelonaAustralian couple Mitchell Ring and Jennifer Colin were forced to share a row of seats with a dead body for four hours while travelling from Melbourne to Doha. The incident occurred after a woman collapsed in the aisle of the plane just after leaving the toilet, the couple explained to Australian channel Channel 9. Although the crew of the Qatar Airways flight tried to rescue the injured woman, she ended up dying halfway through the journey.

Once dead, the flight attendants allegedly tried to move the body to a more remote area of the plane, but were unsuccessful. "She was a large woman," explain Ring and Colin. Once they gave up on taking her to the front of the plane, the crew reportedly asked the couple who were in a row of four seats to move to the empty seats in the same row and left the body covered with a blanket.

According to Ring and Colin, the crew did not offer to relocate them, even though "there were free seats nearby." After landing, the couple also had to remain in their seats for a while: they say they were asked not to get up until the emergency services had evacuated the dead woman. "I can't believe they asked us to stay. It wasn't nice," says Ring.

The pair are currently on holiday in Italy, where they landed after a stopover in Doha, while they have yet to receive any explanation from Qatar Airways. "They have a duty of care to their customers, as do their staff. They should contact us to see if we need support or any kind of advice," says Mitchell, adding: "I really don't know how I feel right now, I would like to speak to someone to make sure I'm okay."