It’s a thing that happens on nearly every flight. If you travel frequently you’ll know that cabin crew often use the interphone to communicate with each other during flight. So if you’re sat near the jump seat on your flight to your holiday destination this summer, listen out for this secret code. You could be faced with a rather unusual situation.
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On a normal flight, cabin crew only really talk to each other from one end of the plane to the other, to check stock of food and drink and the more general administrative tasks that they have to carry out every flight. But, if you ever hear them ask ‘Is there a Jim Wilson on-board’ it’s because they’re checking if the plane is carrying a dead body or rather a coffin on the flight. Obviously they communicate in code so they don’t panic a plane full of passengers. The same code is used if someone dies mid-flight.
Several airlines use this code to report that there is indeed a dead body or coffin on board. And it’s actually not that rare of an occurrence. It’s estimated that airlines transport nearly 50,000 dead bodies a year. So you very well may have already been on one of these flights without realising.
