Gore on a plane

Ewwwwwwwww

Quote :

Baggage handlers at Sunport got a nasty surprise when they opened up the cargo hold on Southwest Flight 477 Wednesday.

News 13 has confirmed that blood from human remains being transported on the flight managed to leak out of the shipment container.

"A few agents that were working that flight," a source with knowledge of the incident told News 13, "said they wouldn't off load that flight because they said there was blood everywhere."

"I heard them say it was a bloodbath."

Sources tell News 13 that the blood got onto the clothes of several workers and that it leaked onto some of the passengers' luggage.

...Yeah, I got nothin'. :puke:

Why were there human remains on a flight?

What horrible customer care!

Princess wrote:

Why were there human remains on a flight?

That's perfectly normal air cargo. Somebody dies in City A and is to be buried in City B. Nothing sinister in the least, even if it is a little creepy when you see those large white boxes on the loading dock because the hearse hasn't arrived yet.

Ghost in the Machine wrote:

Princess wrote:

Why were there human remains on a flight?

That's perfectly normal air cargo. Somebody dies in City A and is to be buried in City B. Nothing sinister in the least, even if it is a little creepy when you see those large white boxes on the loading dock because the hearse hasn't arrived yet.

I assumed they sealed those to prevent pressure change from causing over-expansion.

I was thinking somebody was shipping a body without the proper paperwork.

I didn't realise there was much blood associated with dead bodies...

Princess wrote:

I assumed they sealed those to prevent pressure change from causing over-expansion.

Not in my experience. The boxes corpses are shipped in aren't... how shall I put this... rigid or air tight.

From the SWA Cargo regs about human remains...

Quote :

All shipping containers must be new and cannot be reused.
Shipper must comply with all local, state, federal, and international regulations.
Shipping containers containing dry ice will be subject to our current dry ice policy.
Human remains must be adequately secured in an air tray or combination tray.
Human remains must be tendered in a container that will adequately protect the contents from damage with ordinary care and handling.
All human remains shipments must appropriately display the label "head" on the outer shipping container to assist handlers in aircraft loading and unloading operations.
Appropriate documentation must accompany all human remains. This includes either a signed certificate of death, burial permit, and/or burial transit removal permit as mandated by local, state and government regulations.

I'm thinking there must have been a serious problem at the origin point, either with the shipping container or with the preparatory embalming. Unfortunately, the original article that Malganis linked to doesn't go into that much detail. There's another article on this at [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] However, it doesn't really add much. It does note that the body was a third party shipment.

Raven wrote:

I didn't realise there was much blood associated with dead bodies...

I'm not very well-versed in how bodies are prepared for funerals, but I would think that the blood would have been drained if the body had been taken care of by a mortician.

I'd be worried about what this person died of, if it were my luggage stained with this blood.

The article isn't exactly informative on whether or not it was actually blood, rather than dyed embalming fluid that the workers mistook for blood, since the only reference is anonymous sources.

I'm a little too creeped out thinking of all the times I've flown, and that there may have been a rotting corpse right under me. Damn. Ignorance can be bliss.

I'm not 100% sure, but I'm fairly sure it's illegal to ship a body that hasn't been embalmed. Simple dignity aside, embalming is usually done within a few hours after the body dies because if you wait too long, decomposition sets in, and no amount of embalming fluid in the world will cover up the smell of a rotting corpse.

Plus, an Angry Robot said, it may not have been blood at all-it may've been embalming fluid leaking out. In which case, if I were the family, I'd sue the mortician who did the job.

BRIEFCASE FULL OF GUTS

Penguin wrote:

BRIEFCASE FULL OF GUTS

That might happen more often than you think. While I was waiting for my return flight, I read an interesting article about plants and animals smuggled into the UK. There was a guy returning from a hunting safari in Africa who had frozen everything before departing, but as the flight was delayed, by the time his luggage was on the transporter, it was piddling blood everywhere. I think the custom office tore him a new one...