The Mile High Dead Club (3 Viewers)

[cheesegrate]

Stewardesses have a thankless job. Dealing with rude and sometimes violent passengers. Then there's the turbulence. The long hours walking thousands of steps in the sky, pushing and pulling trolleys in a metal tube. Putting up with being objectified by leering passengers who rather fantasize having them instead of coffee or tea. And having to do it with a lipstick-perfected smile, looking crisp in a uniform while wearing heels, even if it's thirteen hours into a shift.

They can also add Death as another downside to the job. Statistics suggest being a flight attendant is a relatively dangerous occupation compared to many careers, having comparable injury and mortality rates to occupations like police officers and construction workers.

If you are one of those pervs that secretly wanks off to photos of pretty stewardesses all dolled up, do yourself a favor and picture one lying mangled on a morgue slab in a tattered and stained uniform, because it's happened before and bound to happen again. Sorry to shatter that fantasy of perfection.

This forum is dedicated to the many ways flight attendants have met their end on the job, or just going on- or off-duty - from terrorist killings to accidents to sudden death, in other words, those who have joined the Mile High Dead Club.

It will be periodically updated with new cases.

CASE 1 El Al stewardess gunned down in August 1978

Aftermath of the incident (photos taken during crime scene investigation).

The attack happened around 1:30 pm August 20, 1978 outside the Europa Hotel just as the bus taking the tired El Al crew to their hotel after their long trans-Atlantic flight.

Investigators in the area cordoned off by police tape behind the bus, where the body of the stewardess killed and sole civilian fatality in the attack is lying, having been pronounced dead at the scene. Her body will be taken later that night to the morgue. A postmortem exam was carried out two days later, prior to repatriating the stewardess's body.

CASE 1 continued...

Repatriation of the stewardess's body:

Honor guard of fellow stewardesses (note their orange uniform - the victim would have been wearing this style of uniform when she was killed):

 

[Morally-Skewed-Hippo]

Just one more reason to wipe the fucking Muslims off the face of the earth.

 

[Gamma🍄Goblin]

Yeah trolly dollys do get alot of grief . Not a job I would do.

 

[Morally-Skewed-Hippo]

Yeah trolly dollys do get alot of grief . Not a job I would do.

Is that because you'd look silly dressed as a flight attendant, or because you'd be "goblin'" up all the duty free booze?

 

[cheesegrate]

CASE 2: The Indian Pan Am Stewardess who made the ultimate sacrifice to save 3 children

This happened in 1986 to Pan Am World Airways Flight 73 which was on its way to New York when hijacked at a stopover at Jinnah in Pakistan, where a 17-hour long drama unfolded. To protect the Americans on board from the terrorists, Neerja Bhanot, an attractive 22 year-old Pan Am stewardess who had done jobs modeling in advertising before becoming a stewardess, collected the American passports to hide them and protect the identities of the American passengers. She also kept her cool, literally, while constantly being the one to answer to the hostage-takers' demands and relay instructions to passengers over the intercom, often at gunpoint, as the fuel eventually ran out and the power generators failed, plunging the cabin into darkness and stifling heat, the air conditioning having failed once the power went out. She also helped distribute refreshments to passengers, and even negotiated to allow them to use the restrooms (instead of going in their seats).

At the end of the 17-hour ordeal, once the shooting started, she opened the door to allow passengers out use the emergency slide, but turned back to help 3 children who were in harm's way. She shielded them with her own body as she was shot multiple times in the back, and was killed instantly (A passenger who witnessed the moment she was shot and saw her body later when it was brought to Mumbai, still in uniform, noted the body still looked "fresh and beautiful because all her wounds were on her back" (see below). An eponymous movie was made to commemorate her heroism in 2016, with the Indian actress Sonam Kapoor playing her.

Stills from the movie:

The real life Neerja Bhanot:

 

[cacarara74874]

If you are one of those pervs that secretly wanks off to photos of pretty stewardesses all dolled up, do yourself a favor and picture one lying mangled on a morgue slab in a tattered and stained uniform

Where are these morgue pictures?

 

[cheesegrate]

CASE 3. A case of sudden cardiac death.

This BA stewardess dropped dead suddenly in her hotel room after finishing her shift while on a lay over in Angola. Her cabin crewmates noticed she did not show up for dinner that night, and when she failed to report in the next morning for the return flight, her crewmates entered her hotel room with security where they discovered her lying on the floor dead, still fully clad in her uniform. The body was flown back to the UK for a postmortem and from her medical history it was discovered she had a congenital heart condition that likely caused a fatal arrhythmia.

CASE 4. Another case of unexplained sudden death just after landing.

This Albanian stewardess "fainted" on the tarmac after the passengers had deboarded the plane after landing in the UK on a continental flight from Tirana to Essex. Passerby and paramedics promptly started CPR after noting she was in cardiac arrest. She was pronounced dead at the scene. A postmortem examination revealed no obvious explanation for the young flight attendant's sudden death. The cause was listed as "sudden adult death syndrome" (i.e. the technical label for 'who the f*ck knows what happened'). She had been active on Instagram posting her jet setting ways, until she joined the Mile High Dead Club.

 

[cheesegrate]

Where are these morgue pictures?

Wow, talk about being direct, I like someone who knows what they want!...Sadly, morgue pics of stewardesses are few and far between (at least ones publicly available). Not that they don't exist - I've included one in the following case

CASE 5. Death in the jungle.

One-Two-Go Flight 269 crashed on September 16, 2007 after landing in the afternoon at Phuket, Thailand, a popular tropical tourist destination. There were thunderstorms in the area and the plane that landed immediately before the doomed flight reported strong wind shear. The pilots of flight 269 tried to abort the approach at the last moment for a go-around, but as the plane struggled to climb, it lost lift around 80 m above the ground and crashed just to the side of the runway on the embankment. The emergency vehicles couldn't get passed the ditch running parallel to the embankment and this significantly delayed the rescue.

Many of the passengers and some crew were able to escape and made their way on foot across the muddy field to safety, fearing an explosion. But the smoldering wreck didn't explode, perhaps due to the aircraft tanks being close to empty (it was at the end of the flight) and because of the moisture/rain. After the remaining survivors were saved, the efforts turned to recovery and forensic examination of the wreckage and bodies. The deceased were brought one by one to a makeshift morgue where bodies spent hours lying inside wet bodybags without refrigeration until they could undergo postmortem examination and identification while relatives waited for the painstaking process to be completed.

Of the 130 people on board, 85 passengers and five crew members (including three cabin crew) perished.

Makeshift morgue with plastic body bags containing Flight 269 aircrash victims

Deceased One-Two-Go stewardess at the morgue still in her bodybag, her uniform soiled and covered in mud

One-Two-Go stewardesses and how they look in their unspoiled uniforms

 

[cheesegrate]

CASE 6: Death in the Desert Heat - An account of a hijacking and 'whodunnit' killing of a stewardess

This next case involves the hijacking of a Russian airliner Thursday, March 15, 2001 by hijackers as an act to protest the Chechen War. The flight with 174 passengers and crew aboard was hijacked Thursday afternoon just 30 minutes after taking off from Istanbul, Turkey. The hijackers were armed with knives and safety axes (used to break windows on the aircraft in an emergency). The pilots barricaded themselves in the cockpit and the hijackers never got in, but the pilots nevertheless complied with the hijacker demands and flew the plane to Saudi Arabia where it landed in Medina.

Some women and young children were released from the plane when it landed, fortunately for them, because the airplane sat on the tarmac in the desert heat for the next 18 hours, the cabin conditions becoming stiflingly hot (there was no air conditioning with the engines off). Negotiations with the hijackers dragged on through the night, during which the crew in the cockpit somehow managed to escape. However, the flight attendants remained aboard the entire time working the longest shift of their lives, dutifully tending to the distressed passengers while at simultaneously keeping the hijackers placated (incidently one flight attendant - not depicted here - had been stabbed early on in the hijacking but ultimately survived).

By mid-morning Friday, one passenger spotted Saudi security forces outside the plane, and the commando gestured to him to keep quiet. Based on some eyewitness accounts, the 27-year old stewardess killed was also aware of the commandos and at the moment the assault began she swung open a cabin side door and deployed the ramp, presumably to help the commandos board the plane, only to be seized by the youngest hijacker and used as a human shield.

This is where things get fuzzy. Prelimary reports and eyewitness accounts suggested the young stewardess was stabbed in the neck and killed as the commandos stormed the plane. However, a postmortem examination of the stewardess's body at a forensic facility in Saudi Arabia after the siege was over showed instead that she was shot in the neck - likely by a Saudi commando - since none of the hijackers had firearms. Nevertheless, the Saudi police did not admit responsibility for the killing.

In total, three people were killed, one Turkish male passenger (also 27 years old), one hijacker and the female flight attendant in question.

(For those wanting morgue pics, you are in luck as this case is one of the rare ones where morgue pics were leaked...)

Shown below is the partially-clad body of the stewardess, still in her uniform skirt and nylons, lying on the floor of a Saudi morgue, looking worse-for-wear (not surprisingly) after the 22-hour ordeal. Note the fatal neck wound that was thought to be a stab wound, but on forensic examination was found to be a gunshot wound instead.

Some more photos of the hijacking: