Body found in landing gear of NY-to-Tokyo flight

Source: AP

10:26 a.m. Monday, February 8, 2010

TOKYO — A body was found inside a wheel well of a Delta Air Lines plane after it landed in Tokyo from New York, and Japanese authorities Monday were trying to identify the man.

The body of the apparent stowaway was clad only in a long-sleeved, plaid shirt and jeans, police at Narita International Airport said.

A mechanic found the body lying inside the landing gear compartment of the Boeing 777-200 during maintenance after Delta Flight 59 landed Sunday night, police official Zenjiro Watanabe said.

"All we know is that he must have sneaked in just before departure, because it is impossible for him to enter the storage during flight," Watanabe said. Police are trying to identify the man.

He had no visible injuries except frostbite and may have died of hypothermia, Watanabe said. The temperature in that part of the plane falls to about minus 58 degrees (minus 50 degrees Celsius) during the long flight.



Read more: http://www.ajc.com/news/nation-world/body-found-in-landing-293634.html

What a way to go.

Hypothermia's kind of that way.

Still, a desperate-sounding move. I wonder what drove him to try.

Japan isn't exactly warm and friendly to people who enter the country illegally.

to a stowaway without any papers.

You better hope it wasn't Jesus.


:blush: Okay I'm going to hell for that one.

And sneakers, flannel, and jeans? Nasty way to go for sure but if you're gonna do some daring shit you have to be prepared. Turning into a stowawaycicle...nasty.

Ya think?

Once again the "police official" is MENSA member!

pun intended.

And I thought Sarah Palin's kind of stupid was over the top before this.

...so tight for persons boarding the plane, proper, but this seeming amateur was able to secrete themselves away without being discovered. I think an explosive wouldn't have to weigh more than a few ounces or a pound to take out the jet in flight.

Very scary stuff.

PB

TYY

the lack of oxygen at altitude would have killed him, also

as an aside, it's nice to know there are complete strangers waltzing around the hangars or tarmac of JFK or wherever the flight originated...

And, yeah, I'd like to think the FAA/etc al. are more freaked out that an unauthroized person was able to get onto the jet this way than the (relatively unsurprising) fact that they died after doing it.

PB

They studied incidents back to the 1950's and determined that about 40% of wheel well stowaways survived, including a few that went as high as 39000 feet. The numbers are lower now because of the higher percentage of high altitude jet flying.

No one has ever survived a wheel well ride that was as long as a New York-Tokyo flight.

... stay between 30,000 and 40,000 feet even these days. Maybe 45,000 on occasion. That said, the air gets pretty thin at those altitudes. I wonder how anyone survived at 39000 feet without an oxygen mask and a snowmobile suit.

TYY

That's even colder than -50 Fahrenheit. :scared:

The air is a tad thin for breathing while in flight.

I would've guessed within the first ten minutes as the plane gained altitude and got a lot colder.

about surviving the flight, but getting on the plane undetected?