A flight attendant died suddenly following a heart attack while working on a trip from Bahrain to Paris.
The flight attendant was identified as Yasser Saleh Al Yazidi, a member of the cabin crew for Gulf Air.
He was on board flight GF 19 from Bahrain at 1:40 on Tuesday morning en route to Paris Charles de Gaulle airport.
According to the Daily Mail, the attendant suffered a heart attack about an hour and a half into the flight.
The pilots of the Airbus A321 made an emergency landing in Erbil, Iraq, so that Yasser could get medical assistance.
Upon landing, the plane was met by medical personnel who took Yasser to the nearest hospital. However, he was pronounced dead on arrival.
Erbil Airport Director Ahmed Hoshyar informed local media that the plane was flying over Iraq at 34,000 feet when the man felt ill.
Gulf Air released a statement following Yasser’s death, “The national carrier expresses its deepest condolences to the crew member’s family and loved ones, and confirms that the flight resumed to Paris as scheduled.”
“Gulf Air reassures that the safety of its passengers and crew comes at the top of its priorities, and thanks the affected flight’s passengers for their patience and understanding,” the statement continued.
The number of pilots, flight attendants, and passengers who have passed out or fainted during flight, or who have died as a result, has increased in recent months.
Earlier this month, a recently hired Envoy Air pilot had collapsed and been pronounced dead shortly after taking off from Chicago O’Hare International Airport en route to Columbus, Ohio.
In September, a Boeing flight commander died suddenly during a flight from Novokuznetsk to St Petersburg in Russia. According to reports, the man, whose identity has not been revealed, felt ill during the flight.
In October, famous comic book artist and illustrator Kim Jung Gi suddenly died on October 3 from heart failure just before he was to board a plane in Paris bound for New York.
In August, a mother tragically died suddenly in her sleep during a long flight from Hong Kong to the UK, leaving her family “traumatized.”
“Tragically, for the remaining eight hours of the flight, Helen’s broken children sat next to their mum in a “breathless sleep” until they landed in Frankfurt, a friend of the family wrote,” according to Mirror.
