In part 135 (air taxi) operations you find yourself flying all kinds of things to all kinds of places. I worked for a big one back in the sixties and the flagship of our fleet was a military surplus C-45G. The civilian version of this aircraft is the venerable Beechcraft Model 18. Most airport bums know them as just a Twin Beech and in the sixtes there was at least one based at almost every airport in North America. With the exception of the DC-3, they are probably the workingest aircraft in history. They have been put on floats and skis; converted to tricycle gear configuration and used for hauling everything from apples to zebras.
One of the things we flew often was dead people. A funeral director would always bring the deceased to the aircraft and load the casket and body. There were always arrangements for an undertaker to unload them at the destination airport. Our Twin Beech didn't have a large cargo door and sometimes the undertaker would have to take the lid off the casket, lay the corpse on a stretcher, put the bottom of the casket in the airplane, return the body to the casket and then reinstall the lid. We usually didn't watch this gruesome procedure and waited until the the plane was loaded before we crawled over the casket to the cockpit to fly to the destination.
One dark night we got a call about 1am to fly a body to Atlanta. I checked the weather and it was suitable for our IFR minimums so I called in one of our other pilots. Our Part 135 operations manual required 2 pilots on night IFR flights in the Twin Beech. In the mean time I got the line boys to help me remove the passenger seats from the airplane to make room for the casket. Our aircraft cabin had 3 seats down the left side and 4 seats down the right side. The door was where the 4th seat would have been on the left side. We didn't bother removing the last seat on the right side since it usually didn't interfere with loading the casket.
This particular night we decided to go ahead and get situated in the cockpit before the body was loaded so we wouldn't have to climb over the coffin. That is the reason we weren't privy to the arrangement the undertaker made with our line boy. The body was actually in a temporary coffin since the family had purchased the casket they wanted in Atlanta. It only took about 10 minutes to load the deceased into the airplane and the line boy came around to the nose of the aircraft to give us a thumbs up that the door was secured and we could start the engines and taxi out to the runway.
It was a classic night from a low budget horror movie. Driving rain, thunder and lighting in the distance and a howling wind. We got our clearance and ATC had given us 6000 feet. We had asked for 10000 or 12000 in hopes of a smoother ride. I tried to argue with them but the best they would do was tell me to ask again when we were over Knoxville. Now the autopilot hadn't worked on this aircraft since the Korean War so it was going to be some hardcore manual flying because of the weather. I was glad LH, one of our most experienced pilots was with me. We were both going to be busy.
The takeoff and climb out were normal and the chop wasn't as bad as I expected. About a half hour from Knoxville the weather started breaking up and I decided that I wouldn't even bother asking ATC for higher. It could even be rougher up higher. Weather forecasting was just as inaccurate in the 1960's as it is now. As we approached Chattanooga I cancelled our IFR flight plan; we were solid VFR and I didn't want to fool with all the position reports and stuff. I gave the airplane to LH and was just going to relax and enjoy the rest of the ride.
There wouldn't be any story if we had waited to get in the cockpit after the corpse was loaded. But now we were on a long final approach to the Atlanta airport. LH was flying and I was handling the radio and check list. He called for flaps 20 when I heard another voice and it was NOT someone on the radio. A human being - I hoped - was standing behind us in the cockpit doorway. LH turned white as sheet and covered his face with both hands. I don't know what that was for - probably some instinctive protective reaction. I'd never been in a airplane with a corpse standing in the cockpit doorway either but I instinctively grabbed the controls and took over flying the airplane. The ghost seemed confused by our reaction to his presence.
Of course you have already figured it out. The undertaker was escorting the body. He had been sitting in that seat that we didn't remove. When he recognized the lights of Atlanta, he came up to the cockpit to see if he could watch us make the landing. We were almost to the touchdown point by the time he explained everything and we recovered from our shock. Technically, we should have sent him back to his seat and seat belt for the landing. There wasn't enough time to do that before we touched down and we didn't want to go around so we bent the rules and let him sit on the bulkhead between the passenger cabin and the cockpit. After seeing what I thought for sure was a ghost, I probably made one of the best landings I have ever made.
And that's the truth
Bowinkle T. Propwash
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