Sunday, Jul. 05, 2009

Final flight: Belleville pilot will scatter ashes of loved ones from 2,500 feet

John Whitney Sr. has come up with a way for dead aviation enthusiasts to take their last flight, so to speak.

He is offering to scatter the ashes of deceased people from his plane at an altitude of 2,500 feet above the location of their choice. You don't have to be an aviator to use the service but that is one of the markets he thought might be interested.

Whitney had a dispenser built by a machinist friend. It is a lined container with a lever to empty it in flight. It fits in an inspection hole in the floor of the plane. The opening extends about a foot below the plane.

A pull of the handle and the ashes fly out to be dispensed by wind. Afterwards the container can be sterilized for its next use.

Descriptions of similar services on the Internet report that there usually is a visible cloud of gray ash but it quickly disperses over a large area if done correctly. But if things mess up, people have ended up with a plane interior full of ash or ash plastered on the tails of planes. That is why Whitney designed his own system.

"People have tried throwing them out the window. A lot of times they fly right back at you," Whitney said.

He said he has advertised the service in the News-Democrat and already has received some interest.

The first to use the service might be his late brother, Bill Whitney, a former Belleville policeman who died earlier this year.

"Before he died, when he heard what I was doing, he said 'I gotta have that done,'" John Whitney said. Bill could be headed for the Shawnee National Forest.

But can you do that? Just anywhere? Apparently as long as you get permission from private property owners and don't drop anything over restricted areas. And common sense would keep you from dispersing ashes over populated areas.

Whitney said he researched this and found that on the East Coast and the West Coast you need permits but not in the Midwest. But to be sure he called county officials to make sure there were no regulations against it.

He offers a few amenities.

"I can say a prayer of their choosing and they get a certificate certifying the GPS coordinates where the ashes were released," Whitney said.

Relatives can't fly along because of insurance regulations but can watch from the ground if possible and he will contact them by radio when the scattering is made.

Whitney started flying in 1958 and was a pilot for Ozark Airlines, TWA and American Airlines before retiring in 2001. He calculates he has logged more than 30,000 hours in the air.

His business is called Aerials by Whitney but he added the ashes service when business suffered recently with the dropoff in subdivision development which accounted for a lot of his photo business.

The service is also available for pets, using a different container.

The cost is $400 for local flights with a higher charge for longer flights.

Whitney lives in Aero Estates, west of Belleville in a development where the homes surround an airstrip.

For more information you can call Whitney toll free at (888) 793-0637 or e-mail him at johnsr@aerialsbywhitney.com.