Aircraft Stowaways

[lopaka]

We definitely have a contender here for 'most disgusting (not to mention horrific) strange fall of the year'. Makes the lavatory-waste-from-an-airplane stories absolutely charming by comparison. :cross eye

Body parts fall from plane approaching JFK

Tue Jun 7, 2005 05:41 PM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Pieces of a man's body fell from the wheel well of a South African Airways passenger plane bound for John F. Kennedy International Airport on Tuesday and landed in the yard of a suburban home, police said.

A U.S. customs inspector discovered the rest of the man's body at 7:30 a.m. (1130 GMT) after Flight 203 landed in New York from Johannesburg, South Africa, said a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which oversees area airports.

A South African Airways spokeswoman said it appeared to have been a stowaway attempt. She said the plane had stopped in Dakar, Senegal, on its way to New York.

The pilot reported feeling vibrations at takeoff but conducted a check and found nothing amiss, said Nassau County, New York, police detective Kevin Smith.

During the flight, Smith said the pilot felt more "vibrating sensations and heard pounding, but nothing appeared wrong with the plane."

The body parts, which included the right leg, part of the spine and a hip, struck a garage roof of the home in South Floral Park, New York, before landing in the backyard, police said.

© Reuters 2005. All Rights Reserved.

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtm ... ID=8723742

 

[Melf]

We definitely have a contender here for 'most disgusting (not to mention horrific) strange fall of the year'. Makes the lavatory-waste-from-an-airplane stories absolutely charming by comparison. :cross eye

Body parts fall from plane approaching JFK

Tue Jun 7, 2005 05:41 PM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Pieces of a man's body fell from the wheel well of a South African Airways passenger plane bound for John F. Kennedy International Airport on Tuesday and landed in the yard of a suburban home, police said. [snip]...[/snip] The body parts, which included the right leg, part of the spine and a hip, struck a garage roof of the home in South Floral Park, New York, before landing in the backyard, police said.

© Reuters 2005. All Rights Reserved.

It's Raining Men Lyrics



Hi - Hi! We're your Weather Girls - Ah-huh -
And have we got news for you - You better listen!
Get ready, all you lonely girls
and leave those umbrellas at home. - Alright! -

Humidity is rising - Barometer's getting low
According to all sources, the street's the place to go
Cause tonight for the first time
Just about half-past ten
For the first time in history
It's gonna start raining men.

It's Raining Men! Hallelujah! - It's Raining Men! Amen!
I'm gonna go out to run and let myself get
Absolutely soaking wet!
It's Raining Men! Hallelujah!
It's Raining Men! Every Specimen!
Tall, blonde, dark and lean
Rough and tough and strong and mean

God bless Mother Nature, she's a single woman too
She took off to heaven and she did what she had to do
She taught every angel to rearrange the sky
So that each and every woman could find her perfect guy
It's Raining Men! Hallelujah! - It's Raining Men! Amen!
It's Raining Men! Hallelujah!
It's Raining Men! Ame---------nnnn!

I feel stormy weather / Moving in about to begin
Hear the thunder / Don't you lose your head
Rip off the roof and stay in bed

God bless Mother Nature, she's a single woman too
She took off to heaven and she did what she had to do
She taught every angel to rearrange the sky
So that each and every woman could find her perfect guy
It's Raining Men! Yeah!

Humidity is rising - Barometer's getting low
According to all sources, the street's the place to go
Cause tonight for the first time
Just about half-past ten
For the first time in history
It's gonna start raining men.

It's Raining Men! Hallelujah! - It's Raining Men! Amen!
It's Raining Men! Hallelujah! - It's Raining Men!

(c) the weather girls



sorry but i couldnt resist

 

[Anome]

Sounds like the old Frozen Corpse in Midsummer story. (Can't remember if it's a UL or not.)

Guy hides in wheel well of aircraft, freezes to death on the way, and falls out when the gear is lowered on approach to the airport, landing in a park in the middle of summer, leaving the police to wonder where the hell the body came from.

(It was on Hill Street Blues once, but it was an established story at that point.)

 

[JamesWhitehead]

I think the script-writers were just embellishing real life to make a better mystery there. The real sad case I recall from about ten years ago was of a man who froze to death in the wheel-space. He was discovered in situ on landing, iirc, so it wasn't much of a story-line just an unmaginably horrible was to die.

That case was discovered at a London airport, I think. There may, of course be many similar ones worldwide. It would certainly count as a major security lapse in the present climate.

 

[Mighty_Emperor]

Different report:

Man's Leg, Torso Fall Out of Plane in N.Y.

Updated: Tuesday, Jun. 7, 2005 - 11:48 PM

By PAT MILTON
Associated Press Writer

FLORAL PARK, N.Y. (AP) - The body of an apparent stowaway was ripped in half during flight Tuesday and his leg crashed into a suburban neighborhood, where a homeowner found the severed limb in the middle of her lawn, authorities said.

Pam Hearne heard "a loud crash" and later was stunned to see a foot clad in an Adidas sneaker and a sock in her yard, said Officer Thomas Blanchard. The leg, with hip and spine attached, dented the shingled roof of her garage before bouncing into the lawn.

Police suspect the remains are from a stowaway who may have been crushed as the South African Airways jet lowered its landing gear on its approach to Kennedy Airport.

Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Jim Peters said the pilot of flight 203 would have probably started lowering the plane's landing gear in the sky over the home in Floral Park, about 5 miles from the airport.

Peters said a Customs agent that met the flight at the airport found another leg hanging from the wheel well.

The airline said in a statement that the flight landed with "no impact" on the passengers and crew and it was working closely with authorities to investigate how someone may have stowed away.

The flight originated in Johannesburg, and made one stop in Senegal. Authorities had not identified the remains, which were hauled away from Hearne's yard in a plastic bag.

Hearne, a special education teacher, said that when she first saw the leg in the grass, "it didn't look real."

"But I am very glad that I live where I do," she said, "so I don't have to run for my life like this man probably was doing."

There have been cases of stowaways being crushed by the mechanism in aircraft wheel wells and perishing from the extreme cold at high altitude.

--------------------------------
Copyright 2005 The Associated Press.

www.wtop.com/index.php?nid=104&sid=528562

-------------------------
I've also split things of to make a new thread on human body parts falling out of the sky.

 

[Timble2]

It's the fact they didn't find him for a week that makes this a bit odd.

Grauniad

Dead stowaway may have been on jet for week

Esther Addley, Andrew Meldrum in Johannesburg and Dan Glaister in Los Angeles
Saturday February 3, 2007

A teenager from Cape Town whose body was discovered on Sunday in the wheel bay of a British Airways plane in Los Angeles may have stowed away a week earlier, investigators believe.
Authorities in South Africa and the US are attempting to establish whether the body of Samuel Peter Benjamin, 17, could have been in the compartment since January 22, when the aircraft last visited Cape Town and six days before his body was found. It would mean that the corpse had travelled many thousands of miles, to Hong Kong, Singapore and Vancouver.

The body was discovered by the pilot in a routine check on Sunday afternoon when the Boeing 747-700 was preparing to return to Heathrow, BA said.

A post mortem earlier this week was complicated by the fact that the body was partly frozen when it was found. The LA county coroner's office said that further tests could take up to eight weeks. BA said it would be repatriating the body "in the near future".

Mr Benjamin was carrying identity documents, and his family have been informed. "We are discussing he repatriation or otherwise of the remains," said Ronnie Mamoepa, a spokesman for South Africa's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. "The family is in shock as can be expected."

The boy's mother said he left home without saying where he was going, the South African Press Association said.

Attention is focusing on the possibility Mr Benjamin climbed into the wheel bay in Cape Town. A spokesman for BAA, which operates Heathrow, said it would be almost impossible to gain access to the runway at the airport. "All passengers, except in very few circumstances, use air bridges to gain access to the aircraft. There's no direct access to the runway." Only in very rare cases do aircraft stowaways survive the lack of oxygen and extreme low temperatures - minus 56C at 11,000 metres (about 35,000ft) - in the unpressurised compartments.

A spokesman for British Airways said: "Our security measures are focused on prevention and we review every airport we fly to on a regular basis."

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007

 

[GNC]

From Breaking News:
http://www.en.rian.ru/russia/20070924/80694850.html

Boy survives two-hour flight to Moscow hanging onto plane wing
20:56 | 24/ 09/ 2007

MOSCOW, September 24 (RIA Novosti) - A 15-year-old boy from the Urals suffered acute frostbite after riding the wing of a Boeing-737 plane on a two-hour flight from Perm to Moscow, Russian radio station Mayak reported on Monday.

After clinging on for the entire 1300-kilometer (808-mile) flight to Vnukova Airport, the boy, named Andrei, collapsed onto the tarmac. His arms and legs were so severely frozen that rescuers were at first unable to remove his coat and shoes, the radio station said.

The airport did not confirm the report. "We have no information on this," the Vnukovo press service told RIA Novosti.

However, Moscow's air and water transport control department said the radio's claim was true. A department spokesman said the incident occurred on Friday, and that the boy's parents were immediately informed, and flew to the capital the same day.

Doctors said it was nothing short of a miracle that Andrei survived the flight, with temperatures hitting minus 50 degrees Celsius (-58 Fahrenheit), the radio station said. The Boeing-737 has a cruising speed of 900 kmh (560 mph).

The boy reportedly made the journey after a commonplace domestic dispute. Angry with his father, who reportedly has a drinking problem, and with his mother for siding with her husband in family rows, Andrei ran away to the neighboring village, where his grandmother lives. On reaching the village, he decided to go on, and hitched a 220-km (137-mile) ride to the regional center, Perm, where he was dropped off at the airport.

It remains unclear how Andrei was able to climb on a plane wing un-noticed, and the Perm Airport security service is being asked some serious questions, the radio station said.

Andrei is now being treated in a Moscow hospital, Radio Mayak said.

Sounds highly unlikely, he must have had a grip like a vice to hold on at that speed. Could it be a new urban myth (it's not from a Pravda report, mind you)?

 

[rynner2]

Not, I think, on the wing.

Maybe in an undercarriage bay? (And even there, most stowaways perish.)

Perhaps we'll hear more....

 

[Zilch5]

This is the best place I could find for a bizarre story from New Jersey:

Did a Man Mysteriously Fall from the Sky In New Jersey?

Three employees at a veterinarian's office in Egg Harbor Township, NJ say they saw a man fall from the sky on Tuesday, sans parachute. An exhaustive search has turned up nothing. This is pretty disconcerting!

Video at link

View more news videos at: http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/video.

One of the employees told NBC Philadelphia she looked out the window and saw the man plummet to earth head-first: "You could see the arms and legs flailing and his clothes were blue, a dark blue like a navy, black and gray," Hale said. "There's no doubt that it was a person. We're 100 percent sure."

Police looked all day today but found no body. There are only a few possible explanations for this:

* Someone was hiding in the wheel bay of a plane and fell out
* Crazy movie-style mob hit
* Three office workers playing a prank/experiencing mass boredom-induced hallucination
* Jersey sucks so much it actually vacuumed a guy out of his airline seat
* Second coming of Jesus

http://gawker.com/5639212/did-a-man-mys ... new-jersey

I'd say its' possible it was one of those people who try to hide in the wheel well of a plane, die and then fall out on landing. It is only about 40km from Newark airport.

 

[GNC]

I'd say its' possible it was one of those people who try to hide in the wheel well of a plane, die and then fall out on landing. It is only about 40km from Newark airport.

But how could they fall out if the undercarriage was up during flight? The pilot wouldn't take off it was down or partly opened.

 

[rynner2]

I'd say its' possible it was one of those people who try to hide in the wheel well of a plane, die and then fall out on landing. It is only about 40km from Newark airport.

But how could they fall out if the undercarriage was up during flight? The pilot wouldn't take off it was down or partly opened.

Zilch is suggesting that stowaways fall out when the undercarriage is lowered in preparation for landing.

A plane doing say 300kph would cover 40 km in under ten minutes.

 

[GNC]

Zilch is suggesting that stowaways fall out when the undercarriage is lowered in preparation for landing.

A plane doing say 300kph would cover 40 km in under ten minutes.

OK, fair enough, but would the undercarriage be lowered when the plane was still ten minutes away from the airport?

 

[AngelAlice]

This is the best place I could find for a bizarre story from New Jersey:

Did a Man Mysteriously Fall from the Sky In New Jersey?

Three employees at a veterinarian's office in Egg Harbor Township, NJ say they saw a man fall from the sky on Tuesday, sans parachute. An exhaustive search has turned up nothing. This is pretty disconcerting!

Video at link

View more news videos at: http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/video.

One of the employees told NBC Philadelphia she looked out the window and saw the man plummet to earth head-first: "You could see the arms and legs flailing and his clothes were blue, a dark blue like a navy, black and gray," Hale said. "There's no doubt that it was a person. We're 100 percent sure."

Police looked all day today but found no body. There are only a few possible explanations for this:

* Someone was hiding in the wheel bay of a plane and fell out
* Crazy movie-style mob hit
* Three office workers playing a prank/experiencing mass boredom-induced hallucination
* Jersey sucks so much it actually vacuumed a guy out of his airline seat
* Second coming of Jesus

http://gawker.com/5639212/did-a-man-mys ... new-jersey

I'd say its' possible it was one of those people who try to hide in the wheel well of a plane, die and then fall out on landing. It is only about 40km from Newark airport.

Hmmm, well as an ex-pat American, born in Newark (yes, I have to confess it!), I can get on board with the Jersey sucking so much idea. But what seems really weird is - where did the body go?

I mean, how come no one reported a dead guy in a blue suit in some unexpected location? Even in Jersey, you'd think they'd notice.

 

[ramonmercado]

Looks like another stowaway falling to his death.

Investigation into whether dead man found in London was plane stowaway
Police say they are working to identify body found in residential street and that the death is being treated as unexplained
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/sep/1 ... e-stowaway

Monday 10 September 2012 12.07 BST

A man found dead in a residential street could have fallen there from a plane, police investigating the case believe.

Police are looking into whether the body discovered in Mortlake, south-west London, at 7.55am on Sunday morning was that of a stowaway. The man, thought to be in his 30s, had multiple injuries.

Local resident Joe Dodd told London's Evening Standard: "When I got up at 8am, the body was still on the pavement. They had not moved it.

"We were not allowed out of our house for ages. There was police and ambulances everywhere. From where I was, it looked like he had a head injury of some kind. There was loads of blood everywhere, all over the street and on a car."

A Metropolitan police spokeswoman said officers were called to the address at around 7.55am on Sunday "following reports of a dead body".

She said: "The death is currently being treated as unexplained. Inquiries are ongoing to establish the male's identity." A postmortem examination was due to take place on Tuesday.

She added that the theory he might have been a stowaway who fell from a plane was "one line of inquiry".

There have been a small number of cases of stowaways plunging to their deaths after clinging to aircraft.

In December 2000, the bodies of two men were found in farmland near Gatwick airport after falling from the undercarriage of two different planes.

In 1996, Vijay Saini, 19, died after falling 2,000 feet from a DC9 jet over Richmond, south-west London, as it approached Heathrow. His brother Pardeep, 22, survived the 10 hour journey from Delhi in freezing temperatures.

In some instances bodies have remained for several flights after becoming lodged in the undercarriage bay. Because the space is so small, the bodies can become jammed and tumble out several days later, dislodged by a bumpy landing or turbulence.

On most jets, the only way a flight deck sensor would show a problem was if the undercarriage failed to fully retract, suggesting an object had jammed it.

 

[rynner2]

This article looks at this and other examples of deaths (and survivals):

How often do plane stowaways fall from the sky?
By Jon Kelly, BBC News Magazine

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19562101

 

[escargot]

London plane fall man identified as Jose Matada

A man who fell to his death in west London from the undercarriage of an aeroplane has been identified.

The body of 30-year-old Jose Matada was found in Portman Avenue, Mortlake, in September but his identity has remained a mystery until now.

Police originally thought he was Angolan due to the currency found on his body but have established he was in fact from Mozambique.

A Sim card found in his pocket was used to help establish his identity.

Detectives analysed the card and rang the phone numbers that were stored on it.

etc

Poor man fell from a plane, after stowing away (probably clinging to a wheel) in the hope of a better life.

 

[ramonmercado]

Stowaway from Italy ‘froze to death’ on way to Moscow
http://rt.com/news/italy-stowaway-froze-moscow-305/

A man’s body was found in the landing gear bay of a plane that arrived in Moscow from Rimini, Italy. Investigators believe he was a stowaway who died from exposure to cold temperatures at high altitude.

“Apparently the man died from exposure to cold; we suspect that he was a stowaway,” a spokesperson for the investigation said.

The body was discovered on Thursday after the Airbus ?-330 aircraft landed in Moscow’s Vnukovo airport following a night flight.

Blood drops were discovered during a post-landing inspection of the right landing gear, which prompted a thorough search of the bay and the grisly discovery.

Investigators from Moscow’s air traffic police are trying to identify the unfortunate traveller.

The Russian aviation regulator said it will consult with Italian authorities on how the pre-flight servicing and inspection of the plane was carried out in Rimini. The aircraft belongs to the Russian charter airline I Fly.

Trying to save ticket money by sneaking into the landing gear is not uncommon, though usually fatal. With freezing temperatures as low as -55C and scarce oxygen in the high-altitude air, such trips are grueling ordeals for stowaways.

In 2010, a teenage orphan boy traveled a record 300km in a plane’s landing gear after escaping an orphanage in eastern Siberia. He was exhausted by the journey, and was taken to hospital upon arrival.

 

[GNC]

I read about a frozen plane stowaway in a book back in the eighties, one of those "fancy that, funny old world!" paperbacks, and it was a novelty back then, which sounds really odd to say now because it's happening more and more.

Don't the refugees hear about these tragedies and decide against joining that gruesome club? I can't conceive of how desperate they must be to still think it's a good idea.

 

[Pietro_Mercurios]

...

Don't the refugees hear about these tragedies and decide against joining that gruesome club? ...

Quite possibly not.

 

[GNC]

...

Don't the refugees hear about these tragedies and decide against joining that gruesome club? ...

Quite possibly not.

That could be the most reasonable explanation.

 

[Pietro_Mercurios]

Let's face it. Some of the places these refugees are escaping from, for whatever reasons, without lots of money, modern transport, visas and valid passports, are a very, very, long way from here. Desperation could turn every opportunity, however unlikely, into a chance not to be passed up. How many of those refugees know what the atmospheric pressure, or temperature, is in an unpressurized, uninsulated, wheel bay of a jet at 36,000 feet, anyway?

 

[EnolaGaia]

An FAA initial study on wheel well stowaway incidents (1947 - 1993) and survival rates was published in 1996. That early report (covering only 10 incidents reported in the _New York Times_) can be accessed at:

http://www.faa.gov/data_research/resear ... M96-25.pdf

An updated FAA report, cited in this September 2012 BBC article:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19562101

... Raises the total tally to 96 documented incidents since 1947. In these incidents, 73 were fatal, and only 23 stowaways survived. In other words - only a roughly 1 in 4 chance of survival to date.

 

[OneWingedBird]

I wonder how many ended up in the sea and weren't identified as stowaways?

Or could they drop out only at the last minute?

 

[EnolaGaia]

I wonder how many ended up in the sea and weren't identified as stowaways?

Or could they drop out only at the last minute?

They could only fall out of the wheel wells / bays when the hatches / covers were open - i.e., when the landing gear was being retracted or extended.

These hatches would be expected to be open only at take-off and during final approach and landing.

So the prospect of a fall into the sea would pretty much be limited to take-offs and landings at airports immediately adjacent to the shore.

 

[rynner2]

London plane fall man identified as Jose Matada

A man who fell to his death in west London from the undercarriage of an aeroplane has been identified.

The body of 30-year-old Jose Matada was found in Portman Avenue, Mortlake, in September but his identity has remained a mystery until now.

The final episode of a stowaway's story
By Rob Walker, BBC News

Many months after a man from Mozambique fell to his death from the undercarriage of an aeroplane flying over London, his family has been traced.
Jose Matada's body was found in Portman Avenue, Mortlake, in September 2012, soon after a flight from Luanda, Angola, flew over the residential area.

He had no identity papers on him and no-one had reported him missing. Police were unable to trace his next of kin, but his family recently came forward and identified themselves to the authorities in Mozambique.

Jose's mother, Eugenia Ndazwedjua, and his older brother, Paulino Domingos Matada, who live in Maputo, said they had read about his death in a local newspaper called Verdade.
"I was shocked, it was a huge feeling, knowing he'd already been dead for some time - an overwhelming feeling," said Paulino.
He had thought his brother was in South Africa, where he had been employed for several years as a housekeeper and gardener.

The last time Paulino spoke to his brother was in June 2012. After that, when he tried to call him, he couldn't get through.
"I called others who knew him there, but they said, 'he's disappeared'. I didn't expect him to go to another country, I just thought he'd suddenly appear here one day, or call."

Paulino is still not sure why Jose stowed away on the flight from Angola.
He wonders if Jose was trying to re-join his former employer, who had moved from South Africa to Switzerland. "When I heard he had died, I found a Sim card of his here that had messages, with declarations of love on it."

Whatever the reason - whether Jose had fallen in love with his former employer, or whether he was trying to get to Europe to get her help in finding a job - it was a desperate measure. Most stowaways on long-haul flights are killed by the cold and lack of oxygen.

Jose's mother Eugenia wishes that his body could be returned to Mozambique. "He should have been buried in our village, next to his father, next to his great-uncles and aunts, and my other two children who died - but we have no money to bring his body back home."
The family say they have been told that it would cost £7,000 ($11,500) to repatriate Jose's body.
"I am struggling since he died... His father died a long time ago, but even though we are poor, I had my children - that's the only consolation I had."

There is nothing to mark the grave where Jose Matada is buried in Twickenham, west London - no headstone with his name, or his date of birth.
But we know now that Jose Matada was born on 8 September 1985. He died in London on 9 September 2012, the morning after his 27th birthday.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25576086

 

[ramonmercado]

I believe a thread on aircraft Stowaways is required: the ones who are caught before the plane takes off and those who survive the journey as distinct from Strange Deaths and Raining Corpses.

ENGINE STOWAWAY

SERBIA: Workers preparing a plane for a flight from Siberia to an Egyptian resort city discovered a mystery man hiding in one of the engines.

The man was found in the engine of the jetliner that was to fly from Kemerovo to Hurghada, Egypt, the Interfax news agency reports.

The man was in an “inadequate condition” and could not explain how or why he had crawled into the engine, the report said. It said he was taken to hospital after being discovered, but his identity has not been established.

http://www.irishexaminer.com/world/quir ... 78762.html

 

[Mythopoeika]

In the engine? How is that even possible?

 

[Cyclops]

:shock: I'm just glad they found him before they fired the engines up... :cross eye

 

[ramonmercado]

In the engine? How is that even possible?

You could climb into the front of Boeing 777 engine. I presume thats what they meant. He wouldn't survive the engine being started, let alone the flight as he would be sucked into the fans.

 

[ramonmercado]

Serial Plane Stowaway Marilyn Jean Hartman Arrested At Phoenix Airport

PHOENIX (AP) — A woman accused of trying to sneak aboard multiple flights without a ticket and sentenced to jail for returning to a Los Angeles airport in violation of her probation was arrested Tuesday after being recognized loitering at a Phoenix airport, police said.

Police were requesting a mental health evaluation for Marilyn Jean Hartman, 62, who was taken into custody near baggage claim at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport on suspicion of criminal trespass, said Sgt. Trent Crump, a Phoenix police spokesman.

Hartman was recognized by airport personnel about 11:30 a.m. Tuesday "loitering around a checkpoint and again was not in possession of an airline ticket," Crump said. It wasn't the first time she's been spotted at the Phoenix airport.


Hartman was removed from Sky Harbor on Aug. 20 and given a trespass warning after she attempted to enter a security checkpoint without a ticket, Crump said. That incident came just four days after she was released from jail in California because of overcrowding, only serving a fraction of her 117-day sentence.

Police did not know how she got to Phoenix after being released from a detention center in Lynwood, California, and did not know if she had an attorney who could speak on her behalf.

A court commissioner had ordered Hartman to serve jail time for wandering around LAX on Aug. 7, a day after being ordered to stay away from that airport. ...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/2 ... 19369.html