Most stories about travelers attempting to save one of their fellow passengers involves in-flight emergencies where there are few options for medical care. But this tragic incident didn’t begin until the plane had already touched down.

According to KSL.com in Utah, a passenger was pronounced dead yesterday after his United Airlines flight from Denver had landed at Salt Lake City International Airport, but not until after a trio of other passengers performed CPR on the man for around 30 minutes.

One of those men, a combat medic in the Army Reserve, tells KSL that he first noticed the passenger was snoring loudly in a nearby row only a few minutes before the plane came in for a landing.

But after the plane had landed and the cabin lights had been turned on, the medic saw that the man had stopped snoring, and appeared to not be breathing.

“You could tell something was wrong. I asked, ‘Hey, sir, are you awake?’ ” he recalls. “I shook him a bit, trying to see if I could get a response out of him. We checked his throat for a pulse, and it wasn’t there, so we laid him down in the aisle and start CPR.”

With the aid of a defibrillator and two other passengers, he attempted to keep the man alive until airport medics arrived.

After about 30 minutes of CPR, the passenger was pronounced dead.

“They tried their very best; the family of the deceased man would be glad to know he did everything possible to revive him.” says one passenger who witnessed the effort. “It was sad to see the flight attendant remove his bag from the overhead rack — what shocking news for his family.”

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