Every year planes carry thousands of dead passengers around the world in addition to living passengers. However, this was not the case for the family of an Irish man returning home from Greece, as his remains were accidentally left on an Aegean Airlines plane at Dublin Airport (DUB) and were flown back to Greece.
What happened?
On May 22nd, Aegean Airlines flight A3630 between Athens International Airport (ATH) and Dublin International Airport (DUB) was carrying the remains of a dead Irish citizen who died abroad; however, when the aircraft arrived in Dublin, ground services failed to remove the man’s coffin, from the aircraft.
Photo: Dublin Airport
As reported by Sunday Independent, the man’s family was waiting with a hearse at the airport, yet a “misload” resulted in ground services not seeing the coffin and it being removed as planned. Instead, the coffin stayed on the plane and returned to Greece. Once informed of the mistake, the dead man’s family was forced to return home and postpone his funeral, wreaking havoc on the family. Another airline is understood to have flown the body back to Dublin in a repatriation flight, and the man’s remains were returned to the grieving family the next day.
Often, a family member or a funeral home employee will escort the body on the flight and will be able to collect the body at the destination. However, this was not the case because no one accompanied the Irish man’s body.
Currently, Aegean Airlines operates two weekly flights between Dublin and Athens on Mondays and Fridays. Both flights are operated using an Airbus A320neo. Ryanair and Aer Lingus also offer nonstop flights between Dublin and Athens.
Swissport, responsible for all airport ground services at Dublin Airport, issued an apology to the dead man’s family. The company has also launched an internal investigation into how the coffin was missed by ground handling staff in the first place and issued a formal apology to the family of the deceased. Swissport stated,
“We are deeply sorry for the family’s experience at such a difficult time and did everything we could to ensure things were resolved as quickly as possible. We are now conducting an urgent investigation to make sure lessons are learned.”
Swissport is used at 36 airports across Europe and provides both cargo and ticketing services to international and domestic carriers operating at the airport.
Repatriation flights
Commercial planes carry thousands of dead passengers around the world in addition to living passengers each year. American Airlines even has a dedicated help desk for funeral homes called American Airlines Jim Wilson Service. The nickname allows ground services to transport a dead body discreetly and comes from the crates used to transport dead bodies. Other airlines refer to dead bodies as HR, an abbreviation for human remains.
Photo: Dirk Daniel Mann / Shutterstock
Around 50,000 dead bodies are transported by plane yearly as people die outside their homes and must be transported back to their families for the funeral. These bodies are carried in the hold in a secured casket and covered in an airtray.
Amsterdam Schiphol Airport and Brussels Airport each have their own mortuary, which processes almost 2,000 bodies yearly.