Bill Crawford’s Flightlab Blog

Tonya Hodson has just become my go-to person whenever I need someone dumped from an airplane. I should clarify this: I mean the memorial dispersion of a loved one’s ashes, not the sudden disappearance of a business partner.

Unlike my male flying buddies, whose behavior is hard to predict, I trust Tonya to keep the mood solemn and appropriate. She was in the funeral business in Kansas for seven years (working the dry side, I believe), and so knows how to finesse the bereaved. She also owns a Stearman and flies formation at AirVenture. She recently won the Red Baron Memorial Scholarship for Aerobatic Training. Who better for the dispersal job?

An article by Tom Benenson, “Scattering Ashes,” in the October 2007 issue of Flying called these thoughts to mind. Benenson quotes from an account on the Internet that describes the basic problem: the somewhat lower pressure within the cabin, compared to outside, tends to suck the stuff back in. The typical narrative includes a lot of work with a vacuum cleaner. Airplanes are full of good places for ashes to hide. It may take several annuals and maybe an overhaul before the departed has truly done so.

Here’s Tonya’s response to my email inquiry as to whether she had ever dispersed ashes during her funeral parlor days, out there on the wide and rolling prairie.

“Yep, the first time was out of a Skyhawk. Dropped a preacher man over his church in the country with the congregation watching from below. Actually it was quite a moving experience. But aren’t all firsts?

“Next was out of the Stearman. A mother died of cancer and had pre-arranged the whole thing herself. We spread her ashes out in the Flint Hills about 25 miles east of Marion. Her husband and children were watching on top of the hill. We made a circle, and then dropped on the second pass. The air was really calm and the prop wash was well defined by the ashes. We got photos of the circular motion from the ground and the air on that one. Pretty cool.

“Her husband died about 10 months later and we dropped his ashes exactly one year later over the exact same location in the hills.

“Make sure the crematory runs the ‘cremains’ through the grinder at least twice; let them know they are to be dropped from the air and need to be extra fine. It costs a little more but it sure saves the paint on the plane.

“As far as I can tell, there is no way to keep the dust from settling on the side of the plane. I’ve heard of people running PVC pipe down the side of the plane. Never tried that.”

I hope Tonya can find the photographs showing the motion of the prop wash, as revealed by “cremains.” That would be educational, and also bizarre.

Wikipedia.org is full of information on the subject of cremation: Hindus swear by it, Roman Catholics often have mixed feelings. Zoroastrians prefer to expose the body to the elements. Most of the soft tissue turns to vapor and escapes through the crematory’s ventilation system. The ash that remains represents only about 3.5% percent of the body’s original mass. The mean yield in Florida is 5.3 pounds. If you leave a pacemaker inside the body, it explodes when the flames arrive. After the first time, apparently, this is no longer fun, and the originating funeral parlor gets in lots of trouble.

In her email, Tonya mentioned two trips through the grinder as a good idea, which is in conformity with industry recommendations for aerial dispersal. Wikipedia’s treatise contains a photograph of a grinder operator. He’s herding ashes down a hole in a sink. The apparatus looks suspiciously like a commercial kitchen garbage disposer. Even better, he’s wearing a Super Bowl XXXVII sweatshirt with the skull logo of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Even better than that, he’s smoking a cigarette. I don’t see an ashtray. Tonya says that when she got out of the business, around 2002, a second trip through the grinder cost the funeral parlor an additional $50. What a racket! It’s also the case that the grinder may not be perfectly cleaned of the previous set of remains before your party’s ashes go crunching on through. That means you may end up vacuuming a complete stranger out of the Cessna.

In a follow-up call, Tonya reaffirmed that residue is inevitable. Some ash is going to stick to the sides of the airplane, or to your delivery device, or to the inside of the ash container, no matter what. In the case of the airplane, this is just the nature of the boundary layer, in which the speed of the airflow becomes zero at the surface, and you can’t blow the dust (or Uncle Edgar) off, no matter how fast you fly. The only solution, according to Tonya, is discretion. Be prepared to keep the bereaved away from the airplane when you land. Only an amateur would promise airplane rides afterwards.