• A 63-year-old man died on a Lufthansa flight on Thursday, according to Swiss-German outlet Blick.
  • Witnesses told the outlet the man had blood gushing from his nose and mouth.
  • The witnesses said passengers were screaming at the sight.
    • Pretzilla@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Good question. Gasses certainly expand significantly when ascending to the roughly 5000’ cabin pressure altitude.

      Which is readily apparent as the cabin quickly fills with farts. Yes, that’s a thing.

      Dissolved gasses in the bloodstream will also be affected by this, though not quite as drastically. Still a thing a though. That’s why you don’t get on a plane (or even hike above 500m) within 24 hours after you’ve been scuba diving.

      But if you accidently do, or it’s an emergency and you need to fly, at least for some flights you can ask the flight crew to raise the cabin pressure so you don’t get bent.

      So all that said, yes, it certainly could be a possible contributing factor.