How often do plane stowaways fall from the sky?

[Rum]

This was such a striking headline at the BBC website I just had to post it! From: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19562101

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

Police are investigating whether a man found dead on a west London street was a stowaway who fell from a plane. Just how often does this happen?

No-one saw the body fall from the sky on to Portman Avenue.

A few neighbours thought they heard something, a thud or a loud bang. But not a soul was around to witness a man hit the pavement of this quiet residential street in Mortlake, south-west London, early on a bright September Sunday.

Police say the death is being treated as unexplained. But early media reports all shared the same assumption - that he had stowed away in the landing gear of a plane flying to Heathrow, less than 10 miles away.

"He must have come down pretty much vertically to miss the parked cars," says John Taylor, 79, who heard a thump from his home across the street in this placid, affluent suburb. "I expect he was dead already. Poor chap must have been desperate."
Mortlake street where body was found Flowers mark the spot where a body was found in Mortlake

It is not the first incident of this kind on the Heathrow flightpath.

In 2001, the body of Mohammed Ayaz, a 21-year-old Pakistani, was found in the car park of a branch of Homebase in nearby Richmond. Four years prior to that, another hidden passenger fell from the undercarriage of a plane on to a gasworks close to the store.

Others turned up at Heathrow itself. On 24 August, just 16 days before the discovery on Portman Ave, the remains of another man were found in the landing gear bay of a Boeing 747 after it touched down from a 6,000-mile flight from Cape Town. The bodies of two boys, thought to be as young as 12, were discovered in the undercarriage of a Ghana Airways flight from Accra in 2002.

Dr Stephen Veronneau, of the US Federal Aviation Administration, has identified 96 individuals around the world who have tried to travel in plane wheel wells since 1947. The incidents happened on 85 flights. Veronneau is working on the assumption that the Mortlake fatality was a stowaway.

Of these, more than three-quarters have proved fatal.

It isn't difficult to see why. The undercarriage compartment of a plane is equipped with neither heating, oxygen nor pressure, all of which are crucial for survival as the altitude rises.

At 18,000ft (5,490m), experts say, hypoxia will set in, causing weakness, tremors, light-headedness and visual impairment. By 22,000ft (6,710m) the stowaway will struggle to maintain consciousness as their blood oxygen level drops. Above 33,000ft (10,065m) the lungs require artificial pressure to function normally.

Health risks include...

Being crushed when landing gear retracts
Falling when compartment doors reopen
Hypothermia
Frostbite
Hearing loss
Tinnitus
Hypoxia (whole or part of body deprived of adequate oxygen supply)
Acidosis - build-up of acid in body fluids which can cause coma or death

At the same time, hypothermia is likely to be brought on, with temperatures dropping as low as -63C (-81F).

Those stowaways whose bodies are not mangled by the retracting landing gear or killed by these extreme conditions will almost certainly be unconscious by the time the compartment doors re-open a few thousand feet above ground, causing them to plunge to their deaths.

"They either get crushed or frozen to death," says aviation expert David Learmount, of Flight International magazine.

"There's a huge degree of ignorance. If anyone knew what they were letting themselves in for they wouldn't do it."

Some stowaways have survived. They tend to have travelled fairly short distances, but all rely more on luck than judgement.

In 2010 a 20-year-old Romanian survived a flight from Vienna to Heathrow stowed in the undercarriage, but only because the private jet flew below 25,000ft due to bad weather.

In 2000 Fidel Maruhi Tahiti survived the 4,000-mile journey from Tahiti to Los Angeles and, two years later, Victor Alvarez Molina made it from Cuba to Canada alive. But all suffered severe hypothermia.

With such a low survival rate, the obvious question is why anyone would embark on such a high-risk journey.

A handful of stowaways appear to have done so as a prank or out of a misguided sense of adventure. In 2010, the body of 16-year-old American Delvonte Tisdale was found on the flight path to Boston's Logan airport after he apparently hid in the wheel well of a US Airways Boeing 737 from Charlotte, North Carolina.

But such cases are exceptional. The overwhelming majority of cases involve individuals from developing countries attempting to make their way to Europe or North America.

They are also almost exclusively male - despite International Labour Organisation figures suggesting women made up 49.6% of all migrants worldwide in 2005.
Continue reading the main story
Dangerous journey

Since records began in 1947, 96 wheel well stowaways are thought to have attempted to board 85 flights
73 of those stowaways died and 23 survived
Two fatal cases in 2012 to date
First on August flight from Cape Town to Heathrow
And a September flight thought to have been from an African airport to Heathrow - suspected stowaway's body found in Mortlake, south-west London
Youngest recorded survivor aged nine
One person is known to have survived cruising altitude of 39,000ft

Source: FAA Civil Aerospace Medical Institute

Whether motivated by a desire to escape persecution or seek economic prosperity in the West, this method of transit represents the ultimate desperation.

"We don't know the circumstances of these particular people, but we know from our work with refugees that people are often forced to take extreme measures in order to flee their countries," says Deborah Harris, chief operating officer at the Refugee Council.

"In conflict situations, people often have to leave their homes at very short notice, and may have no access to money or belongings so are forced to take desperate measures to escape."

And yet it's hard to imagine even the most afflicted migrant would undertake a journey that was almost certain to lead to their death. It's easy to assume that ignorance of the sheer level of risk is what leads the stowaways to press ahead.

In the West, a public information campaign would be an obvious response to the stowaway deaths. But as the cases tend to originate from developing countries, it's hard to imagine where a concerned organisation might start.

As a result, these individuals represent a huge challenge for the authorities.

According to Norman Shanks, former head of group security at BAA, the threat to anyone other than the stowaway themselves - passengers, flight crews, people on the ground - is minimal.

But actually preventing someone slipping into the undercarriage depends on checks and procedures that are not always present, Shanks warns.

"In a lot of places around the world, the control of movement and airside control areas is not the same as what we have here."

"It's much easier in some locations to access the airside areas than it is in the UK. The only way it could be prevented is if the rest of the world tightened their procedures."

As for the man who fell to earth on Portman Avenue, police are still awaiting the results of his post-mortem.

Scotland Yard has so far been unable to identify him. But Angolan currency found with his remains offers a clue as to his origins.

A makeshift floral tribute has been left at the spot where he was found. Every few minutes, another incoming flight passes overhead.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

The tricky part is you can't often connect the body to a specific flight. And the airlines fight that kind of connection because of liability issues. (Yes, it was a stupid trick, but attorneys don't worry about that.)

[Bella Fortuna]

And it was STILL preferable to riding steerage between a screaming baby and a smelly fat bloke who talks your ear off.

[Tyrannical]

Surprised the survivability rate was as high as it is.

[Tyrannical]

So I guess the answer is, not often enough

[Tero]

They all forgot their Mary Poppins umbrellas.

[Faithfree]

The chance of being hit by one seems pretty low, though somewhat increased if you spend much time beneath the approaches to international airports.

[Ayaan]

It makes me wonder how many fall out, but aren't found.

[Clinton Huxley]

Probably just a passenger on a Ryanair flight who had lost the will to live.

[Bella Fortuna]

Probably just a passenger on a Ryanair flight who had lost the will to live.

I hear riding on the wheel well is as good as it gets with them.

[Rum]

Is this perhaps the opposite of the rapture?

[klr]

Probably just a passenger on a Ryanair flight who had lost the will to live.

Did you hear the story about Ryanair's internal "league table" of pilots who put the most extra fuel on board for their flights? Or Ryanair flights to Spain having to get priority to land over flights from other airlines ...

[Svartalf]

Probably just a passenger on a Ryanair flight who had lost the will to live.

I hear riding on the wheel well is as good as it gets with them.

Used them at least once, and I'd do it again, even if Aer Lingus is better, and I know somebody who goes to Sweden at least once or twice a year, and never flies anything else.

[Clinton Huxley]

RyanAir are an insult in airline form.

[Tyrannical]

It makes me wonder how many fall out, but aren't found.

Landing gear is only down shortly during takeoffs and landings, so all these Darwin Award winners would fall out near runways.