NO ONE knows exactly how many people die in mid-air. The figures are likely to be under-reported, partly because patients are often certified as having died at the hospital to which they are taken, rather than on the plane.
A paper in the British Medical Journal (vol 321, p 1338) puts the death rate from illness on planes at one death per 2.4 to 7.5 billion passenger kilometres – an annual death toll of somewhere between 170 and 540. British Airways, which carried 35 million passengers in 2000, had 10 deaths in mid-air. Extrapolating this figure to all the world’s airlines puts the total number of deaths in the air at around 500 a year. But Farrol Khan of the Aviation Health Institute in Oxford says the real figure could be as high as 1000.
By comparison, the number of people who died in crashes reported to the International Air Transport Association, which represents 278 of the world’s commercial airlines, was 658.
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There is no standard definition of a mid-air medical emergency. The best available information comes from MedAire of Phoenix, Arizona. According to the calls it received last year from aircrew dealing with mid-air medical emergencies, the two most common problems were fainting and gastrointestinal problems.
In third place was cardiac trouble, followed by respiratory and neurological problems, including strokes. But while these cases total less than a third of calls from airlines they accounted for two-thirds of the instances in which MedAire doctors recommended diverting the plane so the passenger could be treated on the ground.