Airplane crew uses a specific code word when there is a dead person on board
Created: 06/12/2022, 09:00
By: Franziska Kaindl
Again and again it happens that airplanes also transport dead people.
The crew then uses a special code word so as not to alarm passengers.
On board an aircraft, passengers sit close together and the crew also does most of their work within hearing and sight of their fellow passengers.
Airline employees have therefore invented their own code words with which they can communicate with each other or via announcements without the passengers being unnecessarily alarmed when listening in.
"Jim Wilson" on board?
Aircrew means a dead man
Have you ever heard the flight attendants on board talk about a certain "Jim Wilson"?
This is not necessarily a passenger, as the British online portal
The Sun
informed some time ago: American Airlines employees use the name as a code word for a dead person on board.
According to the report, the term derives from the name of the company that makes the boxes that are used to safely transport the bodies.
Code words are sometimes used when flight attendants talk to each other.
© Imago
Even with German airlines, the code name for deceased passengers has partially prevailed, as a flight attendant
anonymously revealed to the online portal
Travelbook .
"We actually call the dead that," the employee explained.
However, that would rarely happen.
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Secret code words used by the crew for the dead
The term “Hugo” seems to be better known in German-speaking countries.
"One speaks of a
Hugo
in airline circles when passengers are transported as corpses.
Or from passengers who died during the flight," says commercial pilot Patrick Biedenkapp, according to
Travelbook
.
Hugo is an abbreviation for "human gone", which was translated into "object that died unexpectedly today".
According to Biedenkapp, the advantage of the term is that it sounds far less dramatic than “the dead man”.
Apart from that, according to
The Sun
, some airlines would also use the alias "HR".
This stands for "human remains".
