Only tangentially related… I recently landed in St. Louis and was waiting in my seat to deplane, looked out the window and saw a curiously large cardboard box moving down the conveyor belt out of the cargo hold toward the waiting luggage cart/train. I was wondering, golf clubs? science/medical equipment? when I saw the words HUMAN REMAINS printed on the end of the box. I guess not uncommon, but still unexpected.
After my dad died suddenly last year, we flew him home from AZ via commercial airline (Southwest IIRC) for burial. The plane ticket was about twice that of a living passenger.
Our funeral director took care of the details and we had to pay both the funeral home in AZ and at home which added another $1500 bucks or so to the final cost. Afterwards, we learned about a prepaid option that will return your loved one’s remains home from anywhere for a flat-fee. We signed mom up for that service the very same day along with all of her other prepaid funeral arrangements.
The funeral business is a total scam - but that’s a topic for another thread.
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I also wondered if this poor soul was a traveler (perhaps with family on the same flight) who met with a fatal accident on his/her trip. Trip insurance covers this sometimes, I think.
My brother did something similar and woke up halfway to France on the ferry. Gin was involved, apparently.
That’s a weird, contrarian stance to take. Regardless of the frequency of pressurization, he’s still lucky it was since the alternative is death 
Being drunk at work qualifies, I think.
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Re at work, I think you’re right.
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At least he didn’t wake up on Mimas, naked with a passport in the name of “Emily Berkenstein.”
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i have given up legroom for a heated, pressurized, empty cargo hold ?
I love how nobody questions that a baggage handler was drunk enough to pass out on the clock.
Somtimes my brevity is at odds with clarity. What I was trying to say is that luck was not a factor. It literally is not possible to pressurize the passenger cabin of a 737 without pressurizing the hold. The deck between the two is not airtight, and indeed could not withstand the pressure. Indeed the fact that it isn’t strong enough to is WHY it isn’t airtight. So the “frequency” here is 100%. I can’t think of an airliner for which that IS possible, but I suppose that it is possible that there is some small plane where the cargo is carried outside the pressurized envelope, but I’d guess those cargo holds would be too small to sleep on top of the bags. I suppose that if there was a cabin depressurization accident, he would have been in trouble ,but those are SO rare as to not be a factor.
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