Man hitched ride as a ‘wheel-well stowaway’ on American Airlines flight from Guatemala to Miami
A man was arrested at Miami International Airport on Saturday after traveling in the landing gear of an American Airlines plane departing Guatemala, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said.
The 26-year-old man, whose name and nationality were not released by CBP, “tried to evade detection” by stowing himself in the landing gear compartment, CBP said in a statement, adding that the man was by an ambulance was examined services and taken to a hospital.
The flight, American Airlines 1182, landed in Miami just after 10am on Saturday and “was picked up by law enforcement because of a security issue,” American Airlines spokesman Alfredo Garduno said in an email.
The flight lasted almost three hours. A video posted online showed a man in a light jacket sitting on the tarmac while two workers wearing American Airlines vests tended to him.
“Yes, he survived. He survived, ”said one of the workers while talking on a cell phone.
People trying to hide in tight spaces like the wheel arches of airplanes are taking “extreme risks,” CBP said.
The temperatures in non-pressurized, non-climate-controlled parts of the aircraft can fall to 65 degrees below zero, according to the Federal Aviation Administration, which has investigated the phenomenon of wheel-well stowaways.
People embarking on such a journey run the risk of hypothermia, hypoxia (lack of oxygen), equipment crushed, or death.
Survival of such a trip is rare, but has been documented in the past on even longer flights. In 2014, a 15-year-old California boy flew from San Jose, California to Maui, Hawaii in an airplane wheel well and survived. He was found on the tarmac and said in an interview after the ordeal that he was not trying to get a free beach vacation, but rather to see his mother, who lives in a refugee camp in Ethiopia.
The FAA – which warns of the tactic – said in its report on stowaways that the wheels of an airplane initially provide “significant heat”. As the aircraft gets to cooler altitudes, hypothermia coupled with hypoxia can maintain the nervous system before the descent gradually provides warmth and oxygen.
Still, the survivors face legal consequences for the trip – and the boy who flew to Hawaii suffered hearing damage.
This summer as the United States left Afghanistan, several people who had clung to a U.S. military plane after falling to their deaths in a desperate attempt to flee the country died. US officials also found crushed human remains in a wheel arch.
In 2019, a man was found dead in a garden in south London after apparently falling from the landing gear compartment of a Kenya Airways flight from Nairobi to London. The police found a bag, water and groceries in the compartment. The man fell next to a person who could sunbathe, the BBC reported.
Migrants are often involved in episodes where people stow away in airplanes, illustrating the extreme risks some are taking to escape the dire situations in their home countries. In Guatemala, a hunger crisis has contributed to a wave of migration. All over Central America, people are fleeing poverty and violence.
Bryan Pietsch, The Washington Post on Bloomberg
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