Two women attempted to smuggle a 91 year old dead man aboard an EasyJet flight at Liverpool’s John Lennon Airport over the weekend, before the grisly plan was eventually discovered.

The corpse in question – apparently a relative of the women – is believed to have died of natural causes during Easter weekend. It seems the women wanted to get him back home to Berlin, so they bundled him up, put some sunglasses on him (nice touch) and grabbed a cab for the airport.

They even arranged for “special assistance” for the corpse – and sure enough, an airport employee was standing by with a wheel chair. Then the scheme began to fall apart.

“I immediately felt unsure about the situation, but did my best to help by carefully lifting the man from his seat [in the taxi]. To my horror his face fell sideways against mine; it was ice cold. I knew straight away that the man was dead, but they reassured me that he ‘always sleeps like that’.” – Andrew Millea, Daily Mail, 4-6-10

Hilariously, the airport employee dutifully wheeled the corpse to the gate area anyway, but soon the jig was up and the ladies were arrested (and shortly thereafter released).

Police suspect the alleged smugglers were simply trying to avoid the expense of transporting human remains (or maybe they just wanted the cheap flights available on low-cost carrier EasyJet – which doesn’t transport dead bodies).