TSA Withholds Comment On How Deceased Stowaway Hid in Landing Gear of United Airlines Plane From Chicago to Maui

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has declined to comment on how a stowaway managed to sneak into the main landing gear of a United Airlines Boeing 787-10 Dreamliner from Chicago O’Hare to Maui, Hawaii, on Christmas Eve.

The stowaway was found deceased in the wheel well shortly after United flight UA202 arrived at Kahului Airport following the eight-hour non-stop flight from Chicago on December 24.

A spokesperson for United Airlines has confirmed that the landing gear of the three-year-old Boeing 787 would only be accessible from the outside of the aircraft.

For the majority of the flight, the aircraft climbed to a cruising altitude of around 38,000 feet, where the outside temperature would typically be around -58°F to -76°F.

The unidentified stowaway would have been exposed to freezing temperatures for most of the flight as the landing gear and wheel well were not pressurized or heated.

“Upon arrival at Kahului airport in Maui on Tuesday, a body was found in the wheel well of one of the main landing gears on a United aircraft,” the airline said in an emailed statement.

A spokesperson added: “United is working with law enforcement authorities on the investigation.”

As of December 26, the airline says that it has not been established how or when the person accessed the wheel well.

Although there is suspicion that a security breach at Chicago O’Hare could have allowed the stowaway to access the wheel well undetected, the aircraft (registration: N12010) had arrived in Chicago from Sao Paulo, Brazil, just a few hours before it departed for Hawaii.

Routine maintenance checks, as well as a separate ‘walk around’ inspection by the pilots operating the flight to Maui, should have identified the stowaway if the person had come from Sao Paulo, where the risk of stowaways is heightened.

Airport operations in Maui continued uninterrupted following the discovery of the body, but the return flight to Chicago was canceled. The plane is due to ‘position’ back to Chicago on the afternoon of December 26.

The Maui Police Department is investigating the incident but has not released any further details.

Although rare, it is not unheard of for stowaways to hide in the cramped confines of a plane’s landing gear. Sadly, most stowaways who hide in the wheel well will perish due to the incredibly harsh conditions, but miraculously, some survive.

In 2022, a man miraculously survived an overnight flight inside the nose gear of a cargo plane that landed in Amsterdam following a 12-hour flight from South Africa.

In 2019, the dead body of a stowaway fell from the landing gear of a jet on final approach to Heathrow Airport. The body reportedly fell into the garden of a South London home, narrowly missing a sunbathing resident who was lying just three feet away from where the body fell.

Several years earlier, a man fell from a British Airways plane onto the roof of an office block in Richmond, West London, after an 11-hour flight from Johannesburg.  The man was decapitated in the fall and was found by police in an air conditioning unit on the roof.

A second stowaway was discovered in the landing gear after the plane landed and was rushed to hospital, where he remained in a coma for several months before succumbing to the injuries he sustained during the flight.