22-Year-Old Man Dies Midair On Southwest Flight

A Southwest flight from Dallas to Los Angeles took a tragic turn after a 22-year-old man suffered a mysterious medical emergency and died midair.

Rain McMillan Walmsey, 22, was on board Southwest Flight 958 en route to Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) Friday morning when he fell into medical distress and became unresponsive, local outlet KNBC reported.

Nearby passengers and flight crew scrambled to help, performing CPR and other lifesaving measures as the man suffered a medical emergency midflight. When the plane landed, paramedics rushed aboard, but the young man could not be revived. Firefighters pronounced Walmsey dead at the scene, KNBC reported.

The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office identified the victim but has not yet determined a cause of death, pending further investigation. The office listed Walmsey’s place of death as a LAX Southwest plane.

Southwest confirmed that a medical incident involving one of its passengers occurred aboard the flight but declined to provide additional details.

In-flight deaths remain rare, but Friday’s incident is the latest example of a medical emergency or unruly passengers forcing an airline to abandon normal flight operations and respond to a crisis midair.

In June, chaos erupted onboard an American Airlines flight after an unruly passenger reportedly bit a fellow flyer en route to Philadelphia, CBS News reported. The combative passenger was “trying to fight everybody,” according to air traffic control audio obtained by the outlet. 

“I don’t know… if he’s hallucinating or whatever, but he just bit a passenger, and he’s trying to fight everybody,” a pilot told an air traffic controller, adding, “What a day, huh.”

Reports of unruly passenger behavior peaked at a staggering 5,973 incidents in 2021, during the height of the coronavirus pandemic, and have steadily declined every year since.

“Incidents where airline passengers have disrupted flights with threatening or violent behavior are an ongoing problem, and airlines have seen rapid growth in occurrences since 2021,” The FAA said, citing a “zero-tolerance policy on unruly passenger behavior.”

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