On January 23, 2022, CNN reported a shocking case in which a stowaway was spotted on the landing gear in front of a cargo plane landing at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol on Sunday morning, and the stowaway was still reported to have vital signs.
Flying 11 hours at an altitude of 10,000 meters, the teenager smuggled from South Africa to the Netherlands
Schiphol spokesman Willemeike Koster said that when the ground crew inspected the aircraft, a humanoid object was found in the upper cabin of the freighter's nose gear, and when they went to check it out, it turned out to be a real person, who looked very bad and unconscious.
Ground crews immediately informed the airport security service, and Joanne Helmunds, a spokeswoman for the Royal Netherlands Gendarmerie, said that when security personnel arrived and carried him down, they found that the man was still alive, but the body temperature was relatively low, and the age seemed to be relatively small, probably around 16 years old, but it was not excluded that some smaller adults were not ruled out.
The flight conditions were harsh: it was a great fate to survive
The most shocking thing is that the freighter took off from Johannesburg, South Africa, with a flight time of more than 11 hours and a flight distance of more than 100 million meters, according to KLM officials, the plane will climb to a height of 10,000 meters after takeoff, and then until Amsterdam lands below the height of 10,000 meters, in the middle of which the non-special circumstances are at this cruising altitude.
The 100,000-meter high-altitude atmospheric pressure is only 26.4KPa, only 1/4 of the ground atmospheric pressure, and the temperature during the flight can reach as low as -50 ° C, it is difficult to imagine how this person survived.
Cargolux, the Luxembourg cargo airline where the cargo plane is located, declined to comment on the news, saying it would not release the information after the investigation was complete.
The landing gear has almost no space, how exactly is it hidden?
For the pickpocket plane, at the end of August 2021, the Afghan teenager pickpocketed the C-17 transport plane of the United States from a high altitude must have stung everyone's nerves, for a variety of reasons, may not be caught, may not have entered the landing gear, but finally fell at an altitude of about 400 meters, and its tragic image is really unbearable to witness.
Although the landing gear cabin of the aircraft looks very large, the structural design is very compact, and it seems that each part has a lot of space in the landing support state, but after take-off to reduce the flight resistance, it is folded and put into the landing gear cabin, so this landing gear cabin is also tailor-made for the landing gear, the space is very narrow, and if you are not careful, you will be squeezed to death.
On July 7, 2019, CNN reported that a plane flying from Nairobi, Kenya, to London was preparing to land at London Heathrow Airport, and when the landing gear cabin was opened, a stowaway fell from a high altitude, and the body fell into a london resident's manor, and the marble-enclosed flower bed was smashed to pieces, showing the impact of the impact, and it may have been frozen to death before falling.
In addition, CNN also accompanied a video at the end of the article, saying how to hide in the landing gear cabin, an aviation expert personally demonstrated, but the result was overturned for the first time, because he climbed on the landing gear and found that there was no place to hide, and then jumped back to the ground to find a new one, the second position was hidden, probably just enough to get stuck a person, surrounded by various pipelines.
Theoretically, if you wear warm clothes here, the problem of pickpocketing airplanes is not particularly large, but there is a very troublesome problem of how to cope with low air pressure and lack of oxygen, which cannot be prepared in advance, even if you bring an oxygen cylinder can not support for more than ten hours.
Maybe youth is capital!
On April 25, 2014, CNN reported that a teenager named Yahya Abdi hid in the landing gear of a Boeing 767 and flew from San Jose, California, to Maui, Hawaii, for 5 hours!
According to him, it was a plane approaching one o'clock in the morning, when there was no one around the plane, and he sneaked into the landing gear of the plane, when he just wanted to go to Somalia to meet his mother, and he did not know where he would fly on the plane, and when the landing gear after take-off was folded, he just hid in an unblocked corner, carrying nothing with him except a comb.
Before the plane took off, he was unconscious, and before the coma, the teenager named Yahya said that through the small hole in the landing gear of the aircraft, he could see the lights on the ground, and landed on Maui 5 hours later, but the ground staff did not find him, and after more than an hour he climbed down from the landing gear and could still shake away.
The airport security personnel found out and was sent to the hospital for emergency treatment, and the doctor also said that this operation was extremely dangerous, but he was healthy and alive, and he ate some rice and water at that time, and it seemed that the young man's health was really good.
According to the FAA, since 1947, at least 126 people have tried to smuggle out of the landing gear module, and 77% of them have died for various reasons, some have been squeezed to death, some have died of freezing after falling off the landing gear hatch, and some have died in the landing gear module.
Most of the surviving are short-distance travel aircraft, these regional airliners fly at an altitude of about 6,000 to 8,000 meters, rarely more than 10,000 meters, basically near the human limit, but the probability of surviving in the trunk airliners flying more than 10,000 meters is relatively small, but the man who pickpocketed the plane from South Africa to the Netherlands is also fatal.
The FAA also gave a data, about 44 countries in the world airports have been pickpocketed, the largest is Cuba, reported 9 cases, and 34 cases are from Africa, it seems that Africa's security records are still relatively poor, the United States has three cases involving pickpocketing aircraft smuggling, the other two:
- In 1972, a frozen body was found in the wheel cabin of a flight from San Diego to New York.
- In 2010, the body of a young man hiding on a flight from Charlotte, North Carolina to Boston, fell from the plane into a residential area
Pickpocketing planes is extremely dangerous, and must be considered before pickpocketing.
Extended reading: 14-year-old bear child pickpocketed the plane with his bare hands, and the miracle of 10,000 meters in the air survived
On November 11, 2004, two teenagers picked up flight 3U8670 from Kunming to Chongqing, one teenager fell to his death, the other successfully flew to Chongqing to land, the ground staff found the wrapped clothes only to find that there was an "uninvited guest" on the plane, this teenager named Liang Panlong.
However, after several hours of "testing" at high altitude, he also caused aviation otitis media, perforation of the eardrum, blurred vision, and after more than a year of treatment, he recovered his health.
Teenage teenagers in the process of picking up the plane survival ratio is relatively high, in addition to the body size, this body resistance is also a very critical reason, of course, this article is not to encourage teenagers to pick up the plane, you should have a sense of danger, must not give life to the probability.