Check in? Over my dead body

In early December a fairly reliable source pointed me in the direction of London Gatwick where, he suggested, a wheelchair-bound EasyJet passenger had been denied boarding by a gate agent on account of being unavoidably deceased.

The passenger's lack of responsiveness at check-in, for the flight to Morocco, had allegedly been attributed by his companion to deafness.

EasyJet, sadly, had no record of the incident. Nor did a Gatwick Airport spokesman, who insisted that security personnel would have caught the cadaver before it reached the gate. Probably.

After inquiries to South East Coast Ambulance and Gatwick Airport police similarly turned up no evidence of post-mortem skulduggery, I reluctantly chalked it up to urban legend.

So you'll forgive me if I'm less astonished than I ought to be about this story which, as Yogi Berra might have said, feels like déjà vu all over again.