Man arrested after trying to board flight with dead wife in wheelchair
An elderly man tried to board a flight back from his Spanish holiday with his wife, despite the fact that she was dead.
At Tenerife South Airport, an 80-year-old man tried to pass through a metal detector with his wife, when airport workers became suspicious of her behaviour. They discovered that she wasn’t breathing, and her body temperature was alarmingly low.
As per the Irish Star, the 80-year-old man later admitted that his wife had passed away several hours earlier, when they had arrived at the airport.
After he made the confession, the man was arrested at the scene. Subsequently, an investigation into the circumstances of her death was opened and is currently underway by local authorities.
An airport employee shared the chilling encounter, “When [a fellow worker] took the woman’s hand, she noticed she had an abnormally low temperature and wasn’t breathing.”
Almost instantly, her supervisor was notified: “Within minutes, the emergency protocol was activated, and numerous security agents, Civil Guard officers, and forensic personnel arrived at the scene.”
A similar story emerged at the end of 2025, where an elderly British woman, who was assisted onto an EasyJet flight by her family, appeared to be already dead before she got on the plane.
The incident, which took place at Malaga Airport, saw crew members of the aircraft notified of the woman’s death just minutes before they were set for take off.
Consequently, the plane was halted before it could take off. Passengers of that particular flight then faced a 12-hour delay in returning to London Gatwick. The deceased woman had been wheeled to the back of the aircraft and was assisted into her seat with the help of the relatives.
Despite having a ‘Fit to Fly’ certificate, it appeared obvious to the crew members that she was, in fact, deceased and needed to be removed from the aircraft.
