Did I see a dead body being loaded into the cargo hold?
 

I've read on here before that remains are often transported in the airplane cargo hold. Yesterday, I was on US 138 CLT-PHL. As I was waiting to deplane in PHL, I looked out the window and saw a white cardboard box that looked like it was the size of a casket sitting on a luggage cart. It said "Extreme Care" on the box. Am I right to assume that there was a body inside? Is there a casket inside the box or do bodies just get transported in those boxes?

Nicer experience than one I had on a highway in India. The driver cheerfully pointed out a tarp-covered "object" in the middle of the road ahead: "It is dead body!"

Most likely. Happens more often than you think.

At least there was a tarp. I wasn't so lucky.

I heard some story on NPR where they talked about United carrying literally tens of thousands of bodies a year, which when you think about it makes sense due to the number of people who die away from home, or where they intended to be buried.

One of my college roommates was a part-time pilot and flight instructor (He scheduled all his classes for Tue-Thur and worked the rest of the week. Thank God, because 3 days a week was more than I could stand him). One week he came back to school saying he had transported a body over the weekend and because it was a small plane, the box extended into the space beside him. He felt bad that his coffee mug had left a ring on the box. As he understood it, there was nothing between him and the body but sturdy cardboard.

Delta has a "frequent shipper" type program for funeral home directors to encourage them to ship bodies with DL

I also know that Midwest does quite a business since so many people move to Florida when they retire, only to be shipped back to Wisconsin for burial after they die.

I personally have seen (most often at smaller airports where it's easy to notice) hearses waiting to meet and pick up bodies.

I grew up in the funeral business and I would say with reasonable certainty that what you describe contained human remains.

As to whether or not there was a casket inside, it depends. If the remains were shipped internationally, there most definitely would be a casket or other impervious container inside.

I've been to the DL and US cargo areas at BDL more times than I can remember. Oddly, in all my travels, I've only see human remains on a cart once.

I'm not certain, but I gotta assume that the cardboard box contains a plastic liner. No way would ya' want anything to, uhh, . . . leak . . . out of that box.

I used to work in an air cargo facility, where rarely a day would go by without seeing human remains come through.

The packaging of human remains depends mostly on the origin and destination of the body, the cause of death and like all things, money. Some countries require inbound human remains to be in hermetically-sealed caskets in all circumstances, others only if the remains present a health risk. If travelling domestically, bodies will often be placed in wooden "trays" topped by a heavy cardboard shell. The shell is usually strapped down with nylon ties. Cheap, but surprisingly sturdy.

Souls on Board
 

IIRC from the old flying lessons, when a plane declares an emergency ATC asks for a count of "souls on board" as of right now, and do not use the number listed on the flight plan. "Souls on board" meaning living people. Commercial aircraft often carry human remains as cargo, and the incident that caused the inflight emergency may have killed some passengers or crew.

The reasoning is that after a smash landing the fire rescue people can quit going back into the burning plane after they have pulled out a number of living people equal to the number of "souls on board" and not unnecessarily endanger themselves going after those already dead, regardless if they were originally reclining horizontal in the cargo hold or a first class seat. This info is probably more useful on a smaller plane than a jumbo jet, due to the smaller debris field and ease of counting persons pulled from the wreckage with great certainty.

Arn't you thrilled to know that "people on board" and "souls on board" an aircraft are not always the same number? :eek:

Yup, it's a dead body, and it happens a lot. With AC, sometimes they're worthy of a priority tag! But only if the carcas has status. Whether it comes on the carosel first is up to the carosel gods.

The radio news on the way to work mentioned the arrival of Coretta Scott King at Hartsfield-Jackson earlier this morning. I would imagine she was travelling as cargo.

I also heard that, but my news station mentioned she was traveling by private jet, so not so certain it was cargo.

In another weird distinction, Ireland's Knock Airport (NOC, also sometimes known as Connaught) has for many years landed more dead passengers than live ones. It is the main airport where US and UK funeral operators land the bodies of Irish expats being returned to Ireland for burial. Given the size of the Irish diaspora and the preference of many Irish-born for being buried in Ireland, there are a very large number of them, so many, in fact, that the airport is planning on adding a mortuary onsite.

The airport is quite close to Knock Shrine, and for that reason serves a lot of religious travelers as well. If you are travelling on a religious charter it is not unheard of for the presence of the dead to be mentioned, along with a suggestion that it would be nice to remember them in prayer.