It has been reported that a stowaway spent 2.5 hours concealed in an airplane’s undercarriage compartment before landing in Paris, France.
At Paris’ Orly airport, a security source informed the media that an Air Algeria plane’s undercarriage compartment had the stowaway, who was discovered alive but in severe condition. According to the source, the jet originated from Oran, a town in western Algeria. The stowaway was being treated at a local hospital for a life-threatening condition.
According to the source, stowaways in aircraft cargo holds and unpressurized wheelhouses face extreme temperatures of negative 58 to 76 degrees Fahrenheit and severe oxygen deficiency.
Reports show that in 2019, a man’s yard was hit by the body of an alleged stowaway as it plummeted hundreds of yards from an aircraft circling southwest London. The man narrowly avoided harm as he lay in the sun.
A store in Richmond, southwest London, was the site of the 2015 discovery of a stowaway’s fallen corpse after a British Airways trip from Johannesburg to Heathrow. The plane’s undercarriage revealed the presence of a second stowaway who managed to endure the whole ten-hour journey.
People who try to get inside an airplane’s landing gear compartment, also known as the undercarriage, are called wheel-well stowaways.
A United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) researcher recorded 113 such attempts on 101 planes between 1947 and June 2015.
In 2020, a young stowaway from Ivory Coast was reportedly discovered dead in the plane’s undercarriage at a Paris airport. The youngster had likely died of hypothermia or freezing during the voyage.
The child, probably about ten, climbed into the plane’s belly in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. It departed on a Tuesday night and touched down Wednesday at the crack of dawn at Charles de Gaulle airport, located north of the city.
Air France called the incident “a human tragedy” after discovering the poorly dressed body frozen in the plane’s undercarriage chamber upon landing.
