A stowaway is a person who travels illegally, by aircraft, bus, ship or train. Stowaways face dangerous situations. Since they are not legally on board, they must sometimes spend days without water or food when travelling by ship, risking death. An equal risk of death is taken when trying to board an aircraft. Usually, a stowaway tries to jump into an aircraft by hanging on to the airliner's landing gear as the plane takes off, and the impact of the velocity of the aircraft added to the power of the wind could easily make a stowaway fall to his death. Because people flying on aircraft as stowaways must stay within the landing gear area, they face other risks, such as falling when the plane is landing, or dying from the heat produced by the engines of the aircraft. Deaths from hypothermia, caused by the extreme cold at high altitudes, or lack of oxygen are also possible. Stowaways also risk imprisonment, as it is illegal in most jurisdictions to embark on aircraft, boats or trains as stowaways. Airports, sea ports and train stations are typically marked as "No Trespassing" or "Private Property" zones to anyone but customers and employees. There are several different reasons for which a person might try to become a stowaway, among them free transport and illegal immigration. Some also become stowaways as a dare or a way to get a thrill. Since the September 11, 2001 attacks, it has theoretically become more difficult to be a stowaway onboard transportation arriving to or departing from the United States. Airport security has increased, and among the new security measures is watching over the fences from which stowaways usually gain entrance to an airport's runway.
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Accidents
On 28 July, 1999, Yaguine Koita and Fodé Tounkara were stowaways who froze to death flying from Conakry, Guinea, to Brussels, Belgium. Their bodies were later discovered in the aircraft's wheel bay. The boys were carrying a letter, written in imperfect French, which was widely published in the world media. On June 8, 2005, the remains of a stowaway were found inside the wheel well of a South African Airways aircraft when it landed at John F. Kennedy International Airport, arriving from Johannesburg via Dakar, Senegal. [1] On January 28, 2007, a 17 year old male from Cape Town, South Africa was found in the wheel well of a British Airways flight in Los Angeles, CA. He died from exposure as a stowaway on a previous flight and the body had not been immediately found. That flight had last been in Cape Town five days earlier, on January 23, 2007. [2] On July 19, 2007, maintenance workers at San Francisco International Airport found a dead man in the wheel well of a United Airlines Boeing 747 arriving from China after an 11-hour trip [3]. On Oct 11, 2007 A man known as Osama R.M. Shublaq was reported to have been a stowaway aboard SIA Flight SQ 119. The flight, which took off from Kuala Lumpur at around 10.56pm, arrived in Singapore.
See also
External links
- References for the original study of wheel well stowaways by Veronneau et al. in 1996
- Aviat Space Environ Med. 1996 Aug;67(8):784-6
- The 1996 study was updated and published by The Flight Safety Foundation in 1997
