Passenger collapses and dies after 'trying to strangle woman' on plane

A man reportedly died from a heart attack after allegedly attempting to strangle a female passenger in an air rage incident.

He is also said to have threatened fellow passengers on the flight by saying:

If you want to live, put up your hands. We are going to die, the pilots are asleep! The Airbus A320 plane was forced to make an emergency landing in Moscow, Russia, after the distressing mid-air drama on a flight by Red Wings airline.

Passengers rushed to the woman’s aid after the unnamed 32-year-old Russian man grabbed her by the neck and attempted to strangle her, it was reported.

He screamed abuse at the men fighting him off soon after takeoff on a vacation flight from Moscow to Simferopol, the capital of annexed Crimea, a popular Black Sea resort region.

He also used a mobile phone to repeatedly strike a male passenger on the head, said a witness.

During the violent struggle the aggressive passenger released the woman.

He was then strapped by the crew to a seat, said one witness.

But the man then collapsed with a “cardiac arrest”. A doctor on board restarted the man’s heart, say reports.

The captain decided to return and requested an emergency landing at Moscow’s Domodedovo airport from where it had departed.

The drama on the flight from hell came during just 38 minutes from takeoff to the emergency landing.

Police and ambulance were waiting at the runway. The man was pronounced dead by paramedics minutes later.

Unconfirmed reports said that the attacker received a head injury on the fight.

Paramedics who arrived at the aircraft started to provide medical assistance, but the man died from acute heart failure, said Svetlana Petrenko in a statement issued by the Russian Investigative Committee.

There were no external signs of a violent death.

A passenger named Daria Belikova, in her 20s, said on a video showing the inside of the plane in the immediate aftermath of the brawl:

A man just started going mad here. He has been hitting a woman. They have tied him up now. He was yelling something and was hitting a man who sat next to him over his head with a phone.

One man is heard saying:

Throw him out with a parachute.

A formal investigation is underway into the incident.