[url]latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-fbi-san-jose-flight-stowaway-20140421,0,5355557.story[/url]


Crazy that this guy survived

SD

I need to see more proof. He would have froze solid.

Authorities called it a “miracle” that the teen survived the 5 1/2-hour flight. The wheel well of the Boeing 767 is not pressurized or heated, meaning the teen possibly endured extremely thin air and temperatures as low 80 degrees below zero when it cruised at 38,000 feet.

“How he survived, I don’t know,” Simon said. The boy was unconscious for most of the flight, Simon added.

“I imagine he must have blacked out at about 10,000 feet,” he said. “The air is pretty thin up there.”

According to the Federal Aviation Administration, the plane’s steady climb to high altitudes may allow a person to drift into unconsciousness as oxygen becomes scarce. And as the heat dissipates from the wheel well, a stowaway can develop hypothermia, a condition that preserves the central nervous system. Both hypoxia and hypothermia may resolve as the plane gradually descends for landing, the FAA said.

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-m ... z2zdfB3wbY

About 15-20 years ago I read an article about people stowing away on airliners from Jamaica to New York, apparently there had been a couple of survivors and several dead bodies found in the plane after it parked. After surveying people in Jamaica, the researchers concluded that at least 90-95% of the stowaways died in flight, fell out when the gear was lowered over water in New York, and were never heard from again. Out of the 5-10% that stayed in the wheel well until landing, 90% were also dead. That left a Survival rate of . 5 - 1% or less. After these numbers were published in Jamaica, people stopped trying to get a free ride.

I suspect he's being treated for severe frost bite right now, and will probably only lose some fingers and toes if he's lucky. I'll bet things don't seem so bad at home to him anymore.

I'm just surprised there's enough room for someone to hide in a wheel well without being crushed when the gear comes up.

Bear_Builder wrote:I'll bet things don't seem so bad at home to him anymore.

I dunno man. A third of runaways were sexually abused at home (compared to 1-3% of the general population). Half were beaten. The world can be an ugly place and there isn't exactly a permit process to become a parent.

Maybe this particular case was just a lark, but I'd not be quick to make that bet.

rw2 wrote:

Bear_Builder wrote:I'll bet things don't seem so bad at home to him anymore.

I dunno man. A third of runaways were sexually abused at home (compared to 1-3% of the general population). Half were beaten. The world can be an ugly place and there isn't exactly a permit process to become a parent.

Maybe this particular case was just a lark, but I'd not be quick to make that bet.

I don't doubt that that's true in many cases, and I've certainly seen parents that make wish a permit was required, but I'm curious if those statistics are verified cases of abuse or not? When the daughter of a family I knew ran away several years ago I found out that when a minor enters any kind of shelter, (at least here, back then) they have a choice, claim to be abused, or get a ride home from the police.

This happened more than a few times when we used to fly the Airbus A-300 from Santo Domingo to San Juan which is a relatively short flight.

The plane would land and the sport would run for the perimeter fence.

When they first started doing it, they did not understand that when the gear is retracted the gear doors open up, and when it did, they would fall out and be deposited in the woods surrounding the airport.

Others were crushed by the action of the gear and doors themselves and made a mess of the wheel-well.

At times, a few made the mistake of hopping on the wrong plane as two were leaving at the same time. One was just hopping over to San Juan and the other on the long flight to JFK.

The sport that hopped on the JFK flight was deposited in a residential neighborhood. As a result, our procedures were changed for a while in that we were to lower the gear earlier over the water so any potential stowaways would end up there.

The Airport authority in Santo Domingo finally mowed all of the fields surrounding the runways, and for a while, we were escorted by armed military until we were airborne.

Surprising that the airlines haven't figured out how to squeeze a couple revenue seats in those wheel wells yet!