Boomerang, thanks for the sensible input.
Geek, I really don't know which planet you are from. This is civilian flying we are talking about and though trained, we certainly aren't exposed to dealing with "dead" persons in any state, let alone at 35000ft with 300 pax at the back. It's a scary situation to say the least. Maybe not so in military flying?
Obviously the way to go is pretty much what Boomerang said. We all get trained to ask the c/c to assist in such situations in the very way he has explained.
What need to be explained here is why the poor captain went the way he did.
Was he sick? fatigued? overworked? or simply a course of fate?
And is there anything that could be learned from this? Did he enough l/o period in MNL and was he truly rested?
The airline I flew with in 747 classic, though three crewed had an extended layover policy on long haul trips like these. From what I understand the money making oriented gulf airlines squeeze every minute out of the layover time to bare legality. I can only speculate, but if enough of long haul short layover trips are made, it's only a matter time before the poor motor packs up!