At JFK, Erhan Yildirim Clears Corpses For Takeoff  A wing and a
prayer  American Airlines, which runs a heady business in the
Caribbean and Latin America, flies several thousand a year,
according to a nervous-sounding rep unwilling to get specific.
The Turkish consulate says it certifies the shipping of two to
three bodies each week, as does the Bangladeshi consulate.
Austrian Airlines, which dominates the market to the former
Yugoslavia, estimates that it ships between five and 10 people a
week. (An Albanian funeral director in Brooklyn says that more
than 80 percent of the immigrants from his region prefer to be
buried in their homeland.) JetBlue flies about 25 bodies to
Puerto Rico, and El Al says it ships between 40 and 50—mostly
American-born Hasidic Jews from Brooklyn—to Israel for burial.
Because Jewish law prohibits "maligning" the body, Israel is the
only country that doesn't require embalming for the 12-hour
flight. (Islamic law also prohibits disturbing the physical
corpse, but so far those countri