Desperate measures

[Gob]

A stowaway who is believed to have clung on to a plane has fallen to his death, while another is in hospital.

The two men are believed to have been clinging to a British Airways flight from Johannesburg to Heathrow. The victim was found on the roof of notonthehighstreet.com's headquarters on Kew Road, Richmond, at about 09:35 BST on Thursday. Police said his death was being treated as unexplained. The man who was injured is in a critical condition in hospital. The Met Police said it could not confirm if the two cases were linked. In a statement, the force said: "At this time there is no evidence to link the death to the discovery of a stowaway in the undercarriage of a plane at Heathrow Airport; however this is one line of enquiry into identifying the deceased and the circumstances of his death."

The surviving man, who is believed to be aged 24, was found in the undercarriage of the plane at about 08:20 BST and taken to a west London hospital. Officers believe they know his identity but are awaiting confirmation. The 5,600-mile journey (9,012km) from South Africa to the UK usually takes about 11 hours. In a statement, British Airways said: "We are working with the Metropolitan Police and the authorities in Johannesburg to establish the facts surrounding this very rare case."

Notonthehighstreet.com said the incident was "unrelated to the business or its team members and added the company was "co-operating with the ongoing police enquiry". A post-mortem examination will be carried out on the dead man, who has not yet been identified. Officers said enquiries are ongoing into how long his body had been on the roof. There have been other cases where stowaways have fallen to their deaths in London after smuggling themselves onto planes and hiding in landing gear.

In September 2012, Jose Matada, 26, died after falling from the undercarriage of a flight from Angola to Heathrow on to a street in Mortlake, west London. An inquest heard he may have survived freezing temperatures of up to minus 60C (-76F) for most of the 12-hour flight, but it was believed he was "dead or nearly dead" by the time he hit the ground.

[MajGenl.Meade]

Can't wait for Richard Branson to try it

[BoSoxGal]

Desperate, indeed.

[Guinevere]

It happens.

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

BOSTON — A North Carolina teenager whose body was found in a Boston suburb last month had most likely stowed away inside a plane’s wheel well and fallen as it lowered its landing gear, the authorities said Friday.

The remains of the youth, Delvonte Tisdale, 16, were found in a quiet neighborhood in Milton, Mass., on Nov. 15, below a flight path to Logan Airport.

“It appears more likely than not that Mr. Tisdale was able to breach airport security and hide in the wheel well of a commercial jet airliner without being detected by airport security,” William R. Keating, Norfolk County district attorney, said at a news conference on Friday afternoon.

Mr. Keating said he had alerted federal authorities and the airport in Charlotte, N.C., where the teenager is believed to have gotten on the flight, about the events. While the case is a sad one, Mr. Keating said, it also underscores fears that someone with malicious intent could do the same thing.

“It’s a terrible tragedy what happened to this young man, but if that was someone with a different motive,” he said, “if that was a terrorist that could have been a bomb that was planted, undetected. This is very serious.”

Mr. Keating said the authorities had searched two airplanes that left Charlotte for Boston on Nov. 15, and found handprints in the left wheel well of a Boeing 737 that was scheduled to leave Charlotte Douglas International Airport at 7 p.m. that day.

“As they looked at the grease, they saw what I describe as lateral impressions that showed there was someone in there. There was a handprint in an area where it ordinarily wouldn’t be,” Mr. Keating said.

“I don’t pretend to tell you how he did it,” Mr. Keating said, noting that Delvonte was an Air Force R.O.T.C. student.

Clothing that matched a description that Delvonte’s family had given the authorities was found in Milton along the flight path, Mr. Keating said, and a plastic card — the type one uses to get into a hotel room — was found shattered.

“The altitudes were very high, and it gets very cold,” Mr. Keating said. “That card was shattered into such tiny pieces that it was consistent with something that had been frozen and shattered.”

[rubato]

The first instance of this I can recall happened in L.A. in the 1960s. My dad was a pathology resident at L.A. County Hospital ( later L.A. County USC medical center) and moonlighting as a medical examiner for the LA Country coroner's office. The case was later used for a "Quincy" episode. A body was found badly crushed in a schoolyard later determined to be on the flightpath to LAX. There was no ID with the body and no other evidence in the area.


You have to wonder at the desperation of someone who would even try it. Some are killed immediately by the landing gear retracting. Some are killed by the cold at 30,000 + ft and some by the lack of oxygen. Some are killed because they were unconscious when the landing gear re-deployed and they fell out. That there have been survivors at all is a miracle.



yrs,
rubato

[MajGenl.Meade]

I guess that means that Reallyreallyreallycheaptickets.com is out of business?

[wesw]

darn, there is a highway from Carolina to boston, so I assume that delvonte had lost his thumbs in a freak texting incident and was unable to hitch