On Monday at around noon, Korean Air flight KE901 was ready to depart for Paris from Incheon International Airport, passengers seated and luggage loaded, when police asked that the aircraft be held at the gate.

Minutes earlier, officers had been alerted that a man in his sixties on board intended to travel onward to Switzerland for assisted death. Police boarded the aircraft before takeoff and escorted him off, delaying the flight’s departure.

The intervention — grounding a commercial jet moments before takeoff to prevent a gravely ill passenger from traveling abroad for assisted dying — was highly unusual. It