Stowaway
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A stowaway is a person who secretly boards a vehicle, such as an aircraft, bus, ship or train, to travel without paying and without being detected.
Stowaways face dangerous situations. Since they are not legally on board, they must sometimes spend days without water or food when traveling 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 force of the wind can 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 being crushed in a confined space when the gears retract, 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 anoxia (lack of oxygen) are also possible and probable.
FAA spokesman Ian Gregor said in 2007, that since 1947, there have been 74 known airplane stowaway attempts worldwide. Only 14 of the individuals survived. [1]
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. Seaports, train stations, and airports often attempt further security by designating restricted areas where only employees are allowed to enter.
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[citation needed].
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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[edit] Incidents
19 year old Clarence Terhune hid himself onboard the LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin airship in 1928, becoming the first stowaway to fly across the ocean.[2]
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. [3]
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. [4]
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 [5].
On October 11, 2007 A man known as Osama R.M. Shublaq was reported to have been a stowaway aboard Singapore Airlines Flight 119. The flight, which took off from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia at around 10.56pm, arrived in Singapore [6].
On July 3, 2009 The body of a man was found in the undercarriage of a jet traveling from Ghana to Britain. [7]
On August 9, 2009, the body of 19 year old Filipp Vitaliyevich Yurchenko from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky was discovered in the landing gear bay of an Airbus A320 aircraft after the flight from Irkutsk to Vladivostok, Russia. According to experts, the man had been dead for at least five days.[8]
On December 26,2009, Habib (25) from Moradabad in Uttar Pradesh, who was working at Medina airport with a Saudi ground handling company, got into the plane which returned to Jaipur, Rajasthan, India last night from Medina, Saudi Arabia, and hid in the toilet. Habib’s presence came to light after the flight took off from Medina when a passenger went to the toilet. Air India sources said he got into the plane on the plea of cleaning it. During questioning, it was ascertained that it was a case of stow-away and Habib did not intend to harm anybody. [9]
[edit] Occurrences in popular culture
- Airport -- Ada Quonsett (Helen Hayes) is a sneaky elderly stowaway aboard an airplane which has a mad bomber among its passengers. She was honored with the Best Supporting Actress Oscar.
- Stowaway To The Moon, a Made for TV-Movie originally aired on CBS in 1975. Starring Lloyd Bridges and Michael Link. An 11 year old child, who has been fascinated by space and astronauts, wishes that he could go into space also.
