A Ryanair flight from Tirana, Albania to Manchester, England was forced to make an emergency landing at London Stansted Airport on November 10, 2024, after a British passenger suffered a fatal medical emergency mid-flight. Despite resuscitation efforts by both crew members and fellow passengers, the man was pronounced dead upon landing.

Flight RK8293 took off from Tirana at 5:55 p.m. local time and had already crossed Switzerland and France when the passenger began experiencing severe distress. “Everything went into chaos,” reported a witness, describing how passengers sprang into action as the man started convulsing and soon stopped breathing.

Three passengers with first aid training and two cabin crew members performed CPR in the aircraft’s aisle for around 25 minutes. The crew also used the plane’s defibrillator in a desperate attempt to revive the man. 

A representative from the East of England Ambulance Service reported that an ambulance, a Hazardous Area Response Team vehicle, a paramedic car, and the Essex and Herts Air Ambulance were dispatched to Stansted Airport on Sunday evening in response to reports of a medical emergency involving a man on an aircraft. Unfortunately, despite everyone’s efforts, the man was pronounced dead.

After the emergency landing, passengers disembarked while officials attended to the incident. About 90 minutes later, they reboarded the plane with a new crew to continue to Manchester.

This marks the second in-flight fatality on a Ryanair flight this year. In January 2024, another British passenger died during a flight from Malaga, Spain to Manchester, resulting in an emergency landing in Bordeaux, France.

There have been several other incidents of mid-air fatalities in 2024. In one case, Raiznal Farzad Khalik, a 41-year-old U.S. citizen, died from an unspecified medical condition aboard a Fiji Airways flight from Nadi, Fiji to San Francisco, despite immediate assistance from a doctor on board and cabin crew. 

Another in-flight emergency involved Turkish Airlines pilot İlçehin Pehlivan, who died mid-flight from Seattle, Washington to Istanbul, Turkey, leading to an emergency landing at New York’s JFK International Airport.

Although these types of emergencies remain rare, these cases highlight the unpredictable nature of air travel health risks and the challenges of addressing life-threatening incidents during flight with limited medical resources available at 30,000 feet.