You're a member of the cabin crew, 35,000 feet above the ground and six hours away from your destination, when it emerges one of your passengers has died. What do you do?

Deaths on planes are rare, of course, and seriously ill travellers are often prohibited from flying. But it does happen.

And, while flight attendants are usually adept at dealing with drunks and screaming babies, a lead trainer at British Airways admitted that handling a recently deceased flier is something of a “grey area”. She was, however, able to offer some advice.

“You cannot put a dead passenger in the toilet,” she told new recruits while being filmed for a recent BBC documentary about BA. “It’s not respectful and [the corpse] is not strapped in for landing. If they slid off the toilet, they would end up on the floor. You would have to take the aircraft apart to get that person out. Imagine putting someone in the aircraft toilet?!”

Her macabre advice refers to the possibility that rigor mortis might set in, meaning the body could not be removed from a confined space.

“In a nice, easy world – where someone dying on an aircraft isn’t – you put them back on seats. I know a crew member who had to sit next to someone who passed away for the rest of the flight. All of this is such a horrible topic.”