Jetstar Passenger Chokes to Death on Beef Dinner

A man has apparently choked to death on his in-flight meal while flying Jetstar from Singapore to Auckland.

The New Zealand Herald reported that Robert Rippingale died after choking on a beef dinner. His girlfriend sat beside his body in a crew rest area for the rest of the 11-hour flight.

Rippingale, 31, was pronounced dead aboard by a doctor 90 minutes after takeoff, the paper said.

The deceased man’s girlfriend, Vanessa Preechakul, was quoted as saying that the two were “kissing, holding hands and the next minute he was choking”.

Rippingale had chosen the beef dinner rather than chicken and was tucking into the meal while watching a movie when Preechakul realised that something had gone very wrong.

After thinking initially that her boyfriend was laughing hard, “then I looked at his face and his eyes were rolling and he couldn’t talk. His lips were turning purple”.

Preechakul screamed for help and a doctor and two nurses who were on the flight rushed up and performed CPR on the victim in the galley. Sadly, they were unable to save him.

Jetstar spokesman Andrew McGinnes expressed condolences to the victim’s family and thanked the doctor and nurses who had tried to save Rippingale.

But today’s edition of New Zealand’s Waikato Times quotes a passenger on the flight, Hamilton city councillor Ewan Wilson, a former pilot and Kiwi Air founder, expressing surprise that the airline offered passengers a NZD100 travel voucher to compensate them for the trauma.

Wilson said he watched in horror as Rippingale’s body was carried away and put in a crew rest area for the rest of the flight. Wilson said he felt “that going back to Singapore would have been a lot more appropriate”. He was surprised the plane didn’t immediately divert, as “the general practice for an airline is to land as soon as possible if there is a medical emergency” and there were plenty of places around to land.

Wilson said passengers were “visibly shaken and very shocked” by the mid-air drama and accompanying scream.

Jetstar, however, said that Preechakul had been keen for the flight to to press on to Auckland. New Zealand’s Civil Aviation Authority confirmed that there were no guidelines or laws on how pilots should act in such an emergency, the Waikato Times reported.

The cause of death remains officially unknown until a coroner’s report, which is expected later this month.

Choking while eating can occur in flight, as anywhere else. In 2002, a three-year-old boy choked on his meal during a flight from Britain to the Canary Islands.

The boy was in danger of dying and no doctor or nurse was aboard the plane. It was left to a firefighter to do the best he could and use a resuscitation technique he had only ever practised once – on a dummy. It worked and he saved the boy’s life.

Written by Peter Needham