Airline Pilot Central Forums - Mom's Cremated Remains Lost At SeaTac

From KING5:

SEATAC, Wash. – An investigation is underway at Sea-Tac Airport after a woman says her mother's ashes were missing from her suitcase.

When Noel Nightingale arrived at her destination, the plastic urn was still there, but the remains were missing.

For Noel Nightingale finding the best place to bury her mother was a hard decision.

"I guess I wanted to be respectful to her and do what I could to show her I love her," she said.

After 69-year-old Pauline Corthell was cremated, her daughter finally decided on a family plot in Wyoming.

On March 28, they packed the plastic urn together with the cremation papers in their luggage, took Alaska Airlines flight 88 to Denver, and then drove to Laramie, WY for the ceremony.

"There was a hole already dug and a headstone there and my husband pulled the cremated remains out of the suitcase in the box," Nightingale said, "and it was a lot lighter."

Her mother's ashes were missing.

In the suitcase, there was a standard notice from the TSA that her bag underwent inspection, but no word on what happened to the ashes.
Initially Nightingale blamed herself.

"I wondered if I had done something wrong in transporting the ashes and I began to feel guilty," she said.

But now the TSA is worried that the screeners may have made the error and have launched a search at Sea-Tac Airport.

According to the TSA Web site, passengers can pack an urn in checked or carry-on luggage as long as it can be screened with an X-ray, under no circumstances will a screener open the container, and they will screen the urn for explosive materials and devices using a variety of techniques.
Nightingale is worried.

"I guess I think it's likely they won't be found," she said.

The TSA is now trying to track down the screener that searched the bag to see if anything was removed and why.

Cremated remains vanish at Sea-Tac Airport | Top Stories | KING5.com | News for Seattle, Washington