First Things Last

“BA passengers share first class cabin with a corpse.”

The Mail’s headline is as stark as it is shocking. And reading on we learn what “horrified” passengers aboard a British Airways flight from London to Boston had to endure high in the clouds.

The man is said to have boarded the light in full grasp of his life. But in the course of the flight he suffered a “heart attack”. For 35 minutes a doctor and the crew fought to revive him. But it was for nought. The man was dead.

So the man was placed in a seat. And not just any seat. What many strive for in life this American achieved in death: an upgrade to first class.

As Mission Impossible III played on passengers’ screens, the man was brought to the expensive seats. His body was strapped in and his seat adjusted to the semi-reclined setting. A blanket was placed over him. (Such are the joys of first class.)

As one first-class passenger says: “But his head was exposed and leaning to one side, as if her were asleep. I could see the top of this head throughout the flight.”

Asleep? And that makes us wonder. Was this a ruse, a plot to experience life’s better things? The Mail says the man was “elderly”, at a station in life when risks and should be taken. There is no time to delay. In an instant, the years spent dreaming of what magic lay behind the curtain at the front of the plane were revealed to him. Is this what killed him? He was not ready to see first class. The shock was too much? See first class and die.

We cannot say. And while the man’s death is a warning to they who dare, we fear it will not deter others.

And here goes one spirited passenger now, moving up from economy class and complaining about a “weird tingling sensation” in his legs. He fears he has been contaminated by radiation. His accent alludes to Russian.

And now he’s in first-class. And very soon, he has first class all to himself…

Posted: 5th, December 2006 | In: Tabloids Comment | TrackBack | Permalink