A Sun Country Airlines flight was forced to make an emergency landing Saturday at Whitehorse International Airport when one of its passengers had a fatal heart attack, said a witness to the event.

The plane landed at around 4 p.m. After making a 360-degree turn on the tarmac, the pilot shouted out the window to the ground attendants.

Two ambulances, a fire truck and airport security rushed to the Boeing 737 and removed the man from the plane. He was lifted by four other men directly from the plane hatch to a stretcher on the back of a fire truck.

After getting CPR for about five minutes, the man was loaded into an ambulance and taken to the hospital.

'They were trying everything just to revive him,' said the witness, who did not want to be identified.

The passenger was carefully taken down the stairs at the back of the fire truck by several emergency response and airport staff and loaded into the ambulance.

Chief coroner Sharon Hanley said this morning the passenger was Eugene Seltenreich, 74, from Minneapolis. He was pronounced dead at the hospital.

The plane resumed its flight to Anchorage at exactly 6 p.m. said Danika McKenna, who was visiting the airport at the time.

'It was pretty traumatic for the passengers,' she said.