By: Serach Nissim
Two families endured the same nightmare – having an airline lose the remains of their loved ones on route to the funeral.
As reported by the NY Post, lawsuits have been filed by the families against the airlines. The first is a Bronx family accusing Turkish Airlines of losing the remains of their husband/father on the way to his funeral in Kazakhstan. In the second case, a Brooklyn family is claiming that their mother’s body was 11 days late to services in Puerto Rico and was already decomposing, as per the litigation filed against the funeral home and American Airlines. “The law puts a special value on human remains and you can’t treat deceased person like a piece of luggage or a piece of cargo,” said lawyer Mark Seitelman, the attorney who is representing both families in the cases. “It has to be treated with respect, it has to be delivered on time to the mourners who are waiting to receive it.”
In the first of the case, Serik Berlinbayev died in a Bronx hospital in December 2019 due to liver problems. His wife, Nagima Alzhan, 63, a registered nurse who had immigrated to America in 2002 after winning the green card lottery, paid $15,000 to a local funeral director to embalm her husband’s body and to arrange transport to Kazakhstan. Her husband had been a government official in their native land, and there were about 100 people at the funeral set in Kazakhstan on Dec. 21.
“I cannot talk about this without tears in my eye,” said Alzhan, who said her husband’s remains didn’t arrive. “No one was picking up the phone,” she recalled. “At that moment, we were just crying. It was terrible. It’s not a piece of, I don’t know, something — it’s human. It’s unbelievable what we went through.” She had specified that the burial must take place within seven days of his death, as per Muslim custom.
Berlinbayev’s remains had been lost in Istanbul, and were only brought back after the seven days had already passed. Turkish Airlines didn’t apologize, Alzhan alleges. Her lawsuit against the airline is seeking unspecified damages in Bronx Supreme Court.
As per the Post, the second case was filed in Brooklyn Supreme Court. Ana Rivera, a married mother of two, had died at Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center on March 31, 2020, due to complications from pneumonia. Her family hired Paccione Funeral Directors in Staten Island to help transport the remains to Puerto Rico via American Airlines. The body was expected to arrive on April 8, 2020, as per court documents. The body did not arrive until April 19, and the family says it was already decomposing. The defendants named in the case are Paccione funeral, American Airlines and others.
Turkish Airlines didn’t respond to the Post’s message seeking comment. American Airlines replied that it would review the allegations. Rocco Paccione, the owner of the Staten Island funeral home, replied saying that Rivera’s death came at a tragic time when there were an overwhelming number of deaths due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and resources across the board in healthcare and funeral industries were inundated. “We were given a set of instructions. We followed our instructions and Ms. Rivera got home,” he added.
