If the flight attendant asks if there’s a Jim Wilson on board, that’s what it really means.
About 50,000 bodies are flown in every year, and airlines have nicknames for them, so that this is not known.
Of the millions of people who fly every year, thousands are… dead. But when you’re in the middle of a flight, over the Atlantic, you don’t necessarily want to know that there’s a body in the hold, just under your feet.
The nickname « Jim Wilson » is therefore used to keep passengers from noticing all this. According to Sara Marsden, editor-in-chief of US Funerals Online, American companies even have a service called the « Jim Wilson Service ».
If they are transported by plane, it is because when a person dies in another country, the body is then repatriated. Airlines can thus talk about a body without arousing suspicion