- According to Swiss-German media outlet Blick, a 63-year-old man died on Thursday on a Lufthansa flight.
- Witnesses told the outlet that blood was gushing from the man's nose and mouth.
- According to witnesses, passengers screamed at the sight.
A 63-year-old man died on board a Lufthansa flight this week, losing “several liters of blood” in a scene that left passengers horrified.
According to Swiss-German media outlet Blick, the unidentified man boarded a Lufthansa flight from Bangkok to Munich on Thursday with his wife.
Witnesses Martin Misfelder and Karin Misfelder told Brick they were seated in the row diagonally behind the male passenger and his wife. Karin Misfelder said the man looked sick when he got on the plane.
“He was sweating” and “breathing too fast,” Karin Misfelder said in a translated quote.
The man's wife said he was breathing and acting strange as he was rushing to board the plane, and his symptoms worried the flight attendants. Despite initial hesitation, the flight attendant allowed the man to remain on the plane.
Karin Misfelder, a nursing specialist at a university hospital in Switzerland, told Blick that her concerns about the man persisted and she told the flight attendant to have the man examined by a doctor. At this point, the plane's captain arrived and spoke briefly with the man.
“Then he used a loudspeaker to call for a doctor, and a young man, about 30 years old, from Poland, who didn't speak English well, saw the German,” Karin Misfelder said.
Martin Misfelder said doctors did little to treat the man other than check his pulse and ask how he was feeling. Soon, the man's health deteriorated rapidly.
“Then they gave him a little chamomile tea, but he was already vomiting blood into the bag that his wife had given him,” Martin Misfelder said.
Martin Misfelder said at one point blood was gushing from the man's nose and mouth. He said the man lost “several liters of blood” and some of it splattered on the walls of the plane.
“It was absolute horror. Everyone was screaming,” Martin Misfelder told Brick.
Brick said flight attendants immediately jumped in and tried to resuscitate the man.
“It was very quiet on the ship,” Karin Misfelder said.
The flight departed from Bangkok International Airport at 12:07 a.m. before turning around amid the chaos, according to data from online air traffic tracking site Flightradar24. Karin Misfelder told Brick that the man was already dead when the plane returned to the airport and was taken to the galley.
A Lufthansa representative confirmed Blick's death.
Representatives for Lufthansa did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.
Last year, Lufthansa made headlines after its flight from Texas to Germany was hit by severe turbulence, sending people and food flying through the air.
One passenger told Business Insider that he hit his head on the ceiling of the plane. “It felt like we were in the eye of a tornado,” Rolanda Schmidt told BI. “It didn't stop. I thought it wasn't going to continue like this.”
The plane made an emergency landing near Washington, DC.
