After the elderly woman died, the flight's cabin crew moved her from her economy class seat into a vacant first class seat, strapped her in with a seatbelt, and propped her up with pillows.

Her daughter was given a vacant seat next to her, and reportedly spent most of the remaining five-odd hours of the flight wailing and in tears.

A passenger seated nearest to the corpse, identified by the Daily Mirror only as Paul, told the paper of how the crew had not informed him that the woman had died mid-flight.

"I went to the galley and said, 'She doesn't look too well'," the 54-year-old businessman told the Mirror.

"The crew told me, 'We put out a call to the doctor but it was too late. She's expired.'"

He added that "because of turbulence it (the body) kept slipping down on to the floor. It was horrific."

A spokesperson for BA was quoted by the Mirror as saying: "We apologise, but our crew were working in difficult circumstances and chose the option they thought would cause least disruption."

According to The Guardian, about 10 people a year die on BA flights, and the airline acted in a similar fashion when an American traveller died half-way through a six-hour London-Boston flight in November.

The man was covered with a blanket and strapped into a reclining first-class seat.

AFP