Story here
How sad. 
And how bizarre for the other pilots. Can you imagine?
I wonder if they told the passengers.
This is NOT funny, in any way, but…
Reminded me of *Airplane! *where they’re dragging the (incapacitated) pilots down the center aisle.
The plane has landed safely. I heard they served fish for dinner again and they landed the plane the aid of Ted Stryker, Lloyd Bridges and Otto the Pilot.
Tell that to George Zip.
Where do they bury the survivors?
Under mountains of paperwork.
I’m not freaked out so much at the pilot dying in flight, as there was a co-pilot as well as another pilot on the same plane.
Nope, I’m a 48 year old man freaking at the report of a 60 year old man, presumably in excellent health, dying of “natural causes”.
A friend of mine and I, fiddling around with statistics one day, once figured out that it wasn’t all that improbable to have both pilots die during flight–it was roughly on a par with some of the least likely equipment failure scenarios.
I assume it was an Heart Attack (or similar) and I know plenty of middle age healthy people who have had heart attacks. Fortunately, they were not over the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, several hours away from the nearest hospital and possibly the nearest medically qualified personnel.
When I heard about this at work, I immediately thought of Airplane!
Every pilot I ever knew absolutely loved flying - we should all be so fortunate to die while doing something we love…
But I don’t think the passengers love flying that much. 
From that article:
“In 2007 the pilot of a Continental flight from Houston to Puerto Vallarta fell ill shortly after takeoff. The plane was diverted but the pilot died before arrival.”
Working for Continental must be tough.
Wait until this happens on the ground and they talk the stewardess through the take off.
This happens a few times a year around the world. It really is a non-event for flight safety. The First Officer is a fully qualified pilot as well. Most instances aren’t even reported to the passengers or media. The captains of the “big iron” planes tend to be pretty old so some incidents like this are inevitable.
Yet another flying quote:
“As a pilot, there are only two bad things that can happen to you and some day one of them will. You can walk out to the airplane knowing it’s your last flight. Or, you can walk out to the airplane NOT knowing it’s your last flight.”
They didn’t. Overall, this is a good article about how a pilot’s death need not really be a big deal operationally (though obviously a personal tragic one).
i did wonder why such a big deal was made of it. there are many reasons for having a copilot, pilot death would be one of them. now both pilots passing would be a big deal.
Actually, it’s rather common for long flights, such as over ocean or between continents, to have more than two pilots officially on duty, and there may even be one or two in the back flying as passengers to either relocate to a duty station or to get home or on vacation or whatever.