Short Stuff: Dead Bodies and Airline Codes

almost no Stuff. It would have been like forty five seconds long. So we started trading things and we're going to talk about shipping dead bodies and about other airline codes and other fun stuff like that almost Stuff. But I don't know if it's quite true or not. It seems that American Airlines, uh, according to this author, is Jim Wilson airline code for a dead body on a plane.

From our former website, how stuff Works dot com. Still around, still kicking, still doing it, still going, Everyone gonna check it out. Uh. They got in touch with American Airlines and they're kind of denied it that that was the truth. They said, who told you that, but it seems like it's very much the truth that that's their code. Yeah.

Here's the thing, like, the whole the whole premise of this urban legend, possible truth thing is that you would ever be in a situation where you're on a plane and some flight attendant needs to tell another flight attendant at the back of the plane that there's something going on with the dead body, and they can't just walk down the aisle. It's like, oh, no, I gotta let

you know now. But even still like that would have anything to do with the flight attendants, anything to do with the cabin because all dead bodies are shipped in the cargo hole. They don't they don't prop them up in like you know, you know, they they fly them a certain way, So there's no reason for them to have a code like Jim Wilson to denote that there's

a corpse being transported on this plane. And yet the strangest thing is that it really does seem like they did have that code, Like you were saying, it's possible, because even though they deny it now, the impression I have is that they somewhat recently, but not in the immediate past, but in the memorable past did call it Jim Wilson Service, and then they just discontinued it and called it what same people would call it, would be

like carefully and tenderly moving human remains, because you don't have to have a code name for something like that. Yeah, this was a little frustrating because I wanted there to be a cool origin story. Nope, and there's not. But apparently there is a page or at one time there was recently on the National Funeral Director's Association website that very much did say or does say uh, instructing their

members to use the American Airlines cargo Jim Wilson service. Right, American Airlines is going, I don't know what talking about. I've never heard of that. No, And there's a site called Jim Wilson I believe Jim Wilson dot com. It might be dot org where it's just a single page and there's some links and you know, quotes that kind of support the idea that it it did exist, if

does if it doesn't. Still, there's a Wall Street Journal article from seven that specifically says that that that is the code for this type of service handling um non cremated, casketed human remains, that it's Jim Wilson's service, and they quote a funeral director saying that we say that because you know it's it's much better to say something like that than you know what it actually is around the bereaving family, which again I don't understand that that that

guy's logic at all, doesn't really make any sense. Um, but that I mean, it was in the Wall Street Journal in n so that definitely lends some support as well. But was it specific to American airlines? I believe it was. I think it's all always been associated with American airlines, which makes it even more you know, potentially correct. Yeah. Yeah, I found out that other airlines supposedly say HR for Human remains abbreviate it. I saw h U M as well,

the HUM service. What is that staying for human? It's sure for human. It's like you got comfort plus sky HUM. Human remains that whole thing. Well, I guess that differentiates it from human resources, which is commonly what you think of with HR. Just HR and all those great meetings that companies always have about HR. Sure exactly, and human remains.

So maybe we should take a break and because we did dig up some stuff about how you can transport a dead body because you know, you don't think about it, you could die on vacation in another state or another country. Um. And we'll tell you about that stuff right after this, hey chuck, before we get back to this. Like, I have one more piece of fishy evidence. If you search on your favorite search engine, whatever that may be, I certainly don't condone one over the other. Although I use

Firefox is a web browser. Now I avoid being like the plague. Um I. If you type in Jim Wilson American Airlines, not service, not human rights, no nothing, just Jim Wilson, American Airlines, you will find it takes you to the American Airlines Human Remains site and it rolls you. It does rick roll you for sure. Wow. So it just directs you right to their Huh it does right. So at the very least, the the your favorite search engine is is in on this whole joke. That'd be

pretty cool. And there's also one other part to this joke to um the uh there there's a linked in profile for a guy named Jim Wilson at American Airlines, and does it say, uh, this is avatar like a skeleton. Um no, it's like a normal PERSONA. Well, that's probably him,

I think so. So that's it for Jim Wilson. Here's the deal though, if you do have the need to transport a deceased loved one or yourself, like if someone else is dealing with that, obviously, although you could probably pre arrange this, uh, what you're gonna have to do is work with probably two funeral homes and funeral directors because you gotta get someone on the front end and

the back end. You can't just from what I can tell A, you know, you can't do it at the uh at the origin flight, like, you gotta get a known shipper. That's what is known as the funeral homes and directors are approved as these shippers. But you can't just then say I'll just pick them up at baggage claim. You gotta get someone to do that behind the scenes. And that's going to be a funeral director as well. Right, So you need a funeral director on each end, and

that's gonna cost you. It's probably not super cheap. It depends. I mean, they haven't here anywhere from to fifteen grand. If it's international, it all depends on the weight, how far you're traveling. Uh. And obviously you know you can do it by plane, trainer, automobile, but the plane will be the most expensive. Yeah, and train is pretty cost effective driving the the could ever the corpse, the human remains yourself is the is um the most cost effective?

Can you do that? You can do it, but you have to follow all the same guidelines and laws that that any funeral director would have to follow, and you might not know all of them. But if you're really research heavy and you want to have a story about how you drove your dead aunt across the country and you're station wagon, you can do it. The problem is, is UM with driving in particular, you're gonna go through a bunch of states that might have different laws about

transporting human remains. Some say has to be embalmed. Well, what if your aunt wants to be a cryonically preserved, Well, you're you can embalm somebody like that. So you have to go around that state or it's just probably way better to hire a funeral director um to help with that because they know this stuff and they know how

to handle it. Again, it's just pretty expensive. Yeah, and here's something I never knew sort of one of the maccab sides of travel insurance, you can actually pay, uh, you can pay somebody to take care of this just in case, I guess insurance if you're I don't know, if you if you're on the road for a couple of years, or you're going someplace really dangerous, or maybe if you're in ill health and you don't have to travel, or if you plan on dying, you know your own hand,

suppose you can do that. That's a really good point. I wonder if that's something that people who like travel to Switzerland for assisted suicide take into account. Surely they do, maybe, I mean, apparently it cost less than five hundred bucks. Is certainly a lot cheaper than a fifteen thousand dollar international shipment exactly. Yeah, I saw as much as twenty five thousand for international shipping of of a body. You

often have to, um have documents translated. Because you have to have all your documents, everything from your passport to the certificate that says you were embalmed. Everything, um, it can get very very very costly. So yeah, five bucks. I wonder if the travel insurance people have gotten hip to this thing though. I don't know. I mean it's you know, everyone's always got their hand out. So it's not like you can even put a casket directly into

the cargo hold. It has to sit. And especially made tray that is built by a company that also charges money for that right and and one of the early manufacturers of air trays supposedly was the Jim Wilson Company. Posedly, I supposedly, if you really want to do the right thing and do it cheaper, well, I say it's the right thing is you will have cremated remains a much more cost effective, much easier to ship. You can't even you can carry those yourself, even if you have the

right receptacle. Yes you can. And so if you are going to fly with created remains, a lot of airlines will let you carry them on. It's like carry on luggage. But that means they have to go through the X ray machine, which means you have to have like you can't use like a leadline urn because t s A will be like you can't come on with that, and we're not allowed to open it. Now there's a New York Giants line lineman. I'm not sure what position he plays. His name is a J. Francis who just blew up

twitter um putting. I can't remember. I guess it was T s A on blast because they went through his luggage and he had checked the bag with his mother's created remains, and they opened up the bag and got his mother all over his stuff in his suitcase. What he went berserk. The T s A had like a different story about it. They said that they packed it carefully and wasn't their fault, but he wasn't buy in it. So um, if I were transporting a loved one's created remains,

I would definitely carry it on. But you need to have like a special wood box or something like that. Sure, all of my animals are in wood boxes right at least temporarily. Like you can get a nice urn on the other end, but just don't try to transport them through T s A with that really nice er. Yeah, I like the wood box. I'm not a big urn guy. Oh so you okay? I thought you were making fun of me, Like no, no, no, we have these very nice, hand hand carved woodboxes. That's very nice. Not not into

the urns, very nice. I do have a little something more though, on airline secret codes because I think everyone knows that you can't just get on the intercom as a pilot and say something awful was happening. Uh. You need a little lead time to deal with stuff sometimes. So there's something called code RABO. Apparently they use that to distract passengers from real danger so they can kind

of take care of things on the down low. Uh. Se means your plane has been hijacked, supposedly, So if you hear that, no good, Yeah the number seventy Oh man, I'm going to not be able to not listen out for that constantly on every flight. Now do your pilot announcing that, Uh, folks, we got ourselves a code. Everyone's like what, we don't know what that is, and that's probably for the best, So just sit back, relax, and we will probably blow up any time. Now. It's one

of my favorite things, is it. It's your best impression. It's my impression of a pilot doing an impression of chuck y uh. And then there's seventy six D or seventy seven hundred that means respectively, radio failure UH or general emergency. And then the status of all code ADAM, which you'll also hear at chopping malls or whatever. And that's when there's an incident with a child. Oh then it's named after the Adam that was Adam Wash, Adam Wash. Yeah.

Have you got anything else? Nothing else? No more codes. Nope, that's it for Uh. This short Stuff on Jim Wilson. Who knows if it's real or not. I guess if we all make believe that it is real, we can make it real. So let's do that. Uh. And in the meantime, Short Stuff is out. Stuff you should Know is a production of I Heart Radios. How Stuff Works. For more podcasts For my Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.