An attempted stowaway was caught by airport staff climbing into the landing gear of an airplane that was taxiing for takeoff at Guadalajara International Airport in the Jalisco region of Mexico on November 25.
An eyewitness captured on camera the alarming moment that the man climbed up onto one of the plane’s tires and into the landing gear just moments before airport staff rushed to intercept him.
The staggering security breach at Mexico’s third busiest airport occurred as Volaris flight 1332 was preparing for departure to Acapulco. At the point that the man was stopped, the Airbus A320 airplane was already on Runway 29R preparing for takeoff.
The man was quickly detained and taken into custody, although the flight had to be delayed so that engineers could give the landing a thorough inspection before clearing it to fly.
In the end, the flight, which was meant to leave at 8 am, took off more than two hours late. Local authorities are investigating how the man managed to scale the airport perimeter fence and avoid detection before getting so close to the airplane.
Although rare, stowaways are not unheard of, and people have been known to take dire risks to escape their home country.
In this case, the man was probably trying to flee Mexico rather than end up hiding on a domestic flight, and just didn’t realize that the plane was flying only a short distance one an hour away by plane.
Tragically, many stowaways will not survive even a short journey in the landing gear compartment, where the temperature can quickly plunge to around −50°C at a cruising altitude above 30,000 feet.
Along with the extreme cold, stowaways must also manage to survive the effects of hypoxia in the unpressurized wheelwell.
There are, however, some incredible tales of stowaways miraculously surviving these flights. In September, a 13-year-old Afghan boy survived a flight from Kabul to New Delhi in the landing gear of a Kam Air Airbus A340 jet that flew at altitudes of 35,000 feet.
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.”
Sometimes, dead stowaways are not immediately spotted by airport personnel, with aircraft sometimes completing several more flights before their remains are found.
Also in September, a dead body was discovered in the landing gear of an American Airlines airplane at Charlotte Douglas International Airport that had recently landed from Europe.
The stowaway is not, however, believed to have gotten on board the plane in Europe, but rather in Latin America, where the plane had been several days before.
There have been two other recent cases in which dead bodies have been found in the landing gears of US aircraft, although their remains were probably there for some time.
Last December, the body of a dead stowaway was found in the main landing gear of a United Airlines Boeing 787-10 Dreamliner that had just arrived in Maui, Hawaii, following a flight from Chicago O’Hare.
The aircraft had, however, recently been in Sao Paulo, Brazil, which is an airport at risk of stowaway activity.
And in January, a dead body was found in the landing gear of a JetBlue Airbus A320 that had just landed at Fort Lauderdale Airport following a three-hour flight from New York.
The aircraft had recently flown to Jamaica, which is, again, a destination at risk of stowaway attempts.
