Probably Not Much Worse Than Coach...

[Lord Jim]

In fact maybe better, since he was unconscious for most of the trip:

Teen Stowaway "OK" After Hopping Plane from San Jose to Hawaii

The astonishing case of the 15-year-old stowaway who scaled a fence at Mineta San Jose International Airport before surviving a five-hour flight to Maui in a jet's wheel well has stunned aviation experts marveling at his survival - and is raising questions about the security breach it exposed.

Authorities said the Santa Clara boy apparently hopped an 6-foot fence topped with barbed wire at the San Jose airport while it was dark Sunday morning. Surveillance video showed an unidentified person walking toward a Hawaiian Airlines Boeing 767 on the tarmac, authorities said.

Flight 45 took off at 7:55 a.m. - with no one realizing the boy had snuck into the plane's wheel well.

The boy was apparently unconscious for the duration of the 2,400-mile flight at high altitude and frigid temperatures. After the plane landed at the Kahului airport in Maui at 10:30 a.m. Hawaii time, he remained unconscious for about an hour before emerging from the wheel well, said FBI Special Agent Tom Simon in Honolulu.

"Hawaiian Airlines personnel in Maui noticed the individual on the ramp" and immediately notified airport security, said Alison Croyle, a spokeswoman for the carrier.
Teen won't be charged

A photo from Maui News showed the boy sitting up on a stretcher and being placed into an ambulance. His name and condition weren't released. He is not facing criminal charges in Hawaii - or in San Jose - and was released to social workers, authorities said. Simon said the teen had run away from home after an argument.

The boy apparently picked the first plane he saw, not realizing that his high-flying sojourn would take him halfway across the Pacific Ocean, Simon said.

"The boy is lucky to be alive," Simon said. "I can't imagine anybody surviving that type of flight."

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/S ... 417730.php

[Scooter]

All the security theatre that we are subjected to, that does nothing but inconvenience us for no appreciable increase in our safety, and still a hapless teenager gets away with this. What if he had been a suicide bomber?

[rubato]

The most surprising thing about this story is that, as it turns out, several people have survived this experience.


Amazing. I thought one was a miracle.


yrs,
rubato

[Guinevere]

No so much, really.

We had a beat up body of a teenaged boy found in one of the well-heeled Boston burbs, and turned out he likely froze to death and fell from the well-wheel just before the plane landed in Boston:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/11/us/11plane.html?_r=0

[rubato]

No so much, really.

We had a beat up body of a teenaged boy found in one of the well-heeled Boston burbs, and turned out he likely froze to death and fell from the well-wheel just before the plane landed in Boston:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/11/us/11plane.html?_r=0

No, you missed it. I know that a lot of people have died doing this it was even an episode in "Quincy" (based on an actual LA County Coroners office case during the period when my dad was working there while he was a pathology resident) but the fact that a lot of people have SURVIVED is out of this world. Amazing.


yrs,
rubato