"Of course it was unpleasant, but I am not a person who makes a fuss," Lena Pettersson said after sitting next to a dead person on an airplane. UPI File/Bill Greenblatt | License Photo

STOCKHOLM, Sweden, June 24 (UPI) -- A Swedish woman says she had to fly overnight from Europe to Tanzania next to a man who died after the plane had departed.

Lena Pettersson, a reporter for Sveriges Radio, said the man was having convulsions before the Kenya Airways flight departed from Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The plane took off anyway, The Local.se reported Sunday.


He died several hours later while the plane was in the air.

Pettersson said she then had to sit across from the dead man for the rest of the flight. "Of course it was unpleasant, but I am not a person who makes a fuss," Pettersson told the Expressen newspaper.

She later decided, however, to seek compensation. It took a couple of months of e-mails but she was finally refunded $713 -- about half of the cost of her ticket, Sveriges Radio said.