TORONTO — Whatever nightmare flight you’ve had in the past, there’s no way it could ever compare to the one an Australian couple just had.

Mitch Ring and Jennifer Colin from Melbourne, Australia were flying from their home city to Venice, Italy aboard Qatar Airways when the unthinkable occurred on board: a fellow female passenger collapsed in the aisle close to their seats and, despite resuscitation efforts from the flight crew, tragically passed away.

“The staff were there in no time. I patted them on the back, they did a wonderful job trying to revive her,” Mitch said during an interview with Australian news outlet ‘A Current Affair.’

According to Mitch, flight attendants tried to move the woman into a wheelchair to move her to business class but “she was quite a large lady and they couldn’t get her through the aisle,” he said in the interview, as per Global News.

That’s when things got even weirder, if you can believe it.

“They looked a bit frustrated and then they just looked at me and saw seats were available beside me. My wife was on the other side, we’re in a row of four by ourselves, and they just said to me, ‘Can you move over, please?’ And I just said, ‘Yes, no problem.’ And then they placed the lady in the chair that I was in,” Mitch recounted.

Mitch added that he and his wife were told by the crew that despite there being a few empty seats nearby, they had to remain in their seats – next to the deceased woman – for the remaining four hours of the flight. Even more, he said flight attendants removed the blankets they had used to cover the woman to inspect her body while Mitch and Jennifer sat nearby.

“There were a few spare seats I could see around us. I can’t believe they told us to stay – it wasn’t nice,” Mitch said.

Jennifer, who said the entire experience was “traumatizing,” moved to a different seat when another passenger offered her the empty seat next to them.

When the flight mercifully landed in Venice four hours later, the couple recounted how emergency services quickly boarded the plane, discarded the blankets covering the deceased passenger and removed her body in full sight of everyone on board.

As reported by Bored Panda, Mitch said during the interview: “I thought they would have got us out quickly and let the ambulance and the police in there with no other people.”

According to IATA protocols, if a passenger dies on board a flight, the flight crew should “move the person to a seat – if available, one with few other passengers nearby.” If the aircraft is full, they must “put the person back into his/her own seat, or at the crew’s discretion, into another area not obstructing an aisle or exit.” If body bags are not used by the airline, the flight crew should cover the body with a blanket up to the neck. Upon landing, the crew should disembark other passengers first.

In a statement to multiple news outlets, a spokesperson for Qantas said, “The process for handling incidents onboard an aircraft like this is managed by the operating airline, which in this case is Qatar Airways.”

Further, in a statement to Global News, the airline added: “First and foremost, our thoughts are with the family of the passenger who sadly passed away on board our flight. We apologize for any inconvenience or distress this incident may have caused and are in the process of contacting passengers in line with our policies and procedures.”

At the time of the couple’s interview, reports, Global News, the airline had yet to reach out to them to offer any duty of care or counselling.

“They have a duty of care towards their customers as well as their staff. We should be contacted to make sure, do you need some support, do you need some counselling,” Mitch said during the interview. “I don’t really know how I feel and would like to speak to somebody to make sure I’m all right.”