Air rage passenger drops dead after trying to strangle a female traveller during Russian flight

A Russian man died of heart failure on board a plane just moments after a shocking air rage outburst in which he allegedly tried to strangle a female passenger. 

Customers on the Airbus A320 were terrified after the unnamed 32-year-old aggressor grabbed a woman by the neck. 

He threatened fellow passengers on the flight from Moscow, saying: ‘If you want to live, put up your hands’ and claiming: ‘We are going to die, the pilots are asleep!’

But after being restrained and strapped to a seat he collapsed and died. 

Passengers on board the Airbus A320 from Moscow turn to see what is happening on board the flight where a man threatened his fellow customers, then collapsed and died 

The Red Wings flight was heading from Moscow to Simferopol, the capital of Russian-annexed Crimea. 

Soon after take-off, the man attacked the female passenger and tried to strangle her, it was reported. 

Other passengers came to the woman’s aid and eventually forced him to release her after a violent struggle. 

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

Making alarming threats, he told passengers to ‘put up your hands’ and claimed that ‘we are going to die’.  

Paramedics and police carry the passenger away on the runway after the plane turned back for an emergency landing in Moscow 

A witness said the man was eventually strapped to a seat by the flight crew.   

But he then collapsed with heart pain, forcing the plane to return to Moscow’s Domodedovo airport where it had taken off 38 minutes earlier. 

A female doctor on board restarted the man’s heart, according to reports, but the man was pronounced dead by paramedics waiting on the runway.  

This passenger described how the aggressive man had threatened other customers 

Some unconfirmed reports suggested that the attacker received a head injury in the on board 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 called Daria Belikova described the brawl on board the plane, saying: ‘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 was heard saying: ‘Throw him out with a parachute.’ 

After stepping back into the terminal, she added: ‘I’ve got to say that this weird man has died.

‘What a flight this was!’  

A formal investigation is underway into the incident.