A man sunbathes in his yard on June 30, 2019, in south London. Suddenly, an "ice sculpture" fell from the sky at a very fast speed, smashing the ground out of a large pit. The man was horrified because the ice sculpture was only a few centimeters away from him when it fell. When he saw the "ice sculpture", he was even more frightened, although it was already fragmented, he could still see that it was a frozen corpse!
Stowaways falling from the sky
Most people may not know why frozen corpses fall from the sky, but similar situations are not uncommon. When the police arrived at the scene, they knew that this was most likely another stowaway who had fallen from the plane, and the investigation confirmed this speculation.
The deceased was a 29-year-old Kenyan man. On the same day, Kenya Airways, a Boeing 787 was preparing to fly from Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, to London. The man hid in the wheel cabin before taking off, and was gradually frozen during the 10,000-meter high-altitude cruise. As the plane approached London Heathrow Airport and was about to lower its landing gear, it fell out as the wheel hatch opened the "ice sculpture".
How dangerous is it to pickpocket an airplane?
In fact, even if they don't fall off the plane, the survival rate of stowaways is minimal. Since the 1950s, there have been more than 100 smuggling incidents through aircraft cabins worldwide. Of these known smuggling incidents in the cabin, the survival rate is less than 20%. Even if they survive, the body of the stowaway will be damaged to varying degrees.
However, there are still many stowaways who have fallen into the deep mountains and old forests, deserts, seas and other no-man's land, and no one knows about it so far. Therefore, the actual survival rate may be much lower than 20%, which shows that smuggling in the cabin of the aircraft is "nine deaths".
In general, the cruising altitude of the aircraft is nearly 10,000 meters. Because the higher the distance from the ground, the thinner the air, so people hide in the wheel cabin without pressure, which is equivalent to standing on Mount Everest for a long time without an oxygen cylinder.
In addition, from the ground, for every 1 km increase in altitude, the temperature drops by 6 degrees. If the ground temperature is 20 degrees, then the altitude of 10,000 meters is about minus 40 degrees. As a result, smugglers in the cabin often lose vital signs due to temperature loss or lack of oxygen.
Depending on the aircraft type, the landing gear structure and the wheel cabin structure are also different. After some of the landing gear is retracted, the wheel compartment is almost filled, which means that people are directly caught in it.
In some wheel cabins, there is basically no place to dodge or focus points, and the wheel hatch is easy to fall out when open. In other words, a stowaway may fall to his death when the plane has just taken off, or when he is about to retract from the landing gear.
The recorded moment of the fall
Australian photographer John Gilpin has a habit of going to the airport almost every Sunday to take photos of planes. On February 22, 1970, a plane had just taken off, and he kept pressing the shutter against the plane in the air. A week later, when the film flush was finished, John was stunned.
There is a person and a machine in the photo, and the huge body contrasts sharply with the weak boy under the body. John Description:
The boy begins to bend over in a U-shape with his head and feet on top and waist down. Subsequent photographs show him with his feet lowered and his hands raised above his head. It was clear that the boy had fallen from the plane.
John soon published the photograph in Life magazine, known for its photographic quality, which quickly attracted a global media outlet.
Under pressure from all walks of life, the police quickly figured out the ins and outs. The crasher was an Australian boy, Keith Sapsford. He was only 14 years old and was in a period of rebellion. Keith's father said:
Keith's feet are "itchy", and he has longed to travel and adventure to unfamiliar places since he was a child.
Parents also try to fulfill their children's wishes as much as time and money permit. However, Keith's desire is getting stronger and stronger, and his impulsive personality is becoming more and more uncontrolled. In order to control this "active" child, the parents decided to send him to a local boarding school dedicated to controlling problem children. Unexpectedly, this decision became the last straw that overwhelmed Keith.
Sydney Airport
Keith ran away from home, wanting to see the world on his own, no matter where his destination was. However, Keith has no money, and documents such as passports and other related documents also need to be approved or followed by parents. The only way to do that was to sneak into the tarmac of Sydney Airport.
Experts examine the wheel compartment where Keith fell
That day, Keith spotted a Douglas DC-8 on the tarmac preparing to board. So he climbed the landing gear along the wheels of the passenger plane and entered the wheel cabin where the landing gear was placed.
However, Keith did not know that after the plane took off, the wheel compartment would reopen when the landing gear was recovered. So, when the plane climbed to about 60 meters, tragedy struck. When police found Keith's body, the media described:
It is impossible to describe the scene at that time, the boy's body looked terrible.
Investigators believe that even if Keith knew that the wheel door would reopen, grasped somewhere in advance, and even stayed in the plane from beginning to end, he would not be able to reach his destination alive. Because it was a Sydney flight to Tokyo, the flight was more than 10 hours, and Keith wore only shorts and a short-sleeved shirt. In the unpressurized, unheated compartment, Keith will soon die of lack of oxygen and temperature, and then slowly turn into an ice sculpture.
On June 6, 2013, a corpse was left in the cabin of a ship "safely" at Moscow's Vnukovo airport. Maintenance crews found blood on the landing gear of one of the planes and subsequently found the body of a young male with a Georgian passport in the wheel cabin. The autopsy showed he had frozen to death 4 days earlier, meaning the body had flown with the plane on at least 7 flights. But no one knows exactly where he "boarded the plane."
In addition, there are no lights due to the lack of sound insulation in the wheel cabin. Keith needed to withstand the deafening roar of the engine in the dark. In this harsh situation, a 14-year-old boy is unable to cope with the risk of being crushed to death by the retracted landing gear. Therefore, some experts believe that Keith is likely to be crushed to death first. In short, when Keith boarded this "death flight", it was doomed to this ending.