A 13-year-old Afghan boy survived a flight from Kabul to New Delhi in the landing gear of an Airbus A340 jet that flew at altitudes of 35,000 feet, and apparently, he did it “out of curiosity.”
The boy’s miraculous survival occurred on Sunday morning when he snuck past security at Kabul Airport by hiding amongst a group of legitimate passengers before trailing off and sneaking into the landing gear of a Kam Air Airbus A340.
The boy thought the plane was heading to Iran, but Kam Air flight 4401 actually departed Kabul on September 21 for New Delhi, where it landed around an hour and a half later.
After the plane landed in Delhi, the boy was spotted by airport security personnel walking on the airfield and was quickly detained and taken in for questioning. According to local media, the boy told investigators from the Central Industrial Security Force that he had hidden in the landing gear “out of curiosity.”
A search of the landing gear revealed a small radio that the boy had traveled with for the journey.
The boy was flown back to Kabul the same day and on the same plane – although this time, as a passenger in the cabin.
It’s incredibly rare for stowaways who hide in the landing gear of planes not to be seriously injured or die as a result of the extreme temperatures and lack of oxygen that they are exposed to during a flight.
Temperatures in the unpressurized landing gear compartment can quickly plunge to around −50°C at altitude above 30,000 feet, and the lack of air could lead to prolonged hypoxia.
In June 2022, the dead bodies of two brothers were discovered in the landing gear of an Airbus A330 plane operated by Air Algérie. It’s believed the brothers were trying to get to Barcelona, as this is a short flight from Algiers, which, while still perilous, would have higher chances of survival than longer flights.
Unfortunately, the plane flew to Paris rather than Barcelona. The boys were not, however, discovered until the plane landed back in Algiers the following day.
Earlier this year, JetBlue maintenance workers at Fort Lauderdale Airport found two dead bodies in the wheel well of an Airbus A320 that had just arrived in Florida following a three-hour flight from New York.
The men had not stowed away on the plane in New York but rather in Kingston, Jamaica, where the aircraft had been before flying to New York.
The JetBlue incident occurred just two weeks after the body of a stowaway was found in the main landing gear of a United Airlines Boeing 787 Dreamliner that had just landed in Maui, Hawaii, following an eight-hour flight from Chicago.
Like the JetBlue plane, the United Airlines 787 had recently been in a destination with a high risk of stowaway activity, having just flown back from Sao Paulo, Brazil, a few hours before it departed for Hawaii.
