A 16-year-old Kenyan stowaway has become the subject of debate after miraculously surviving a 14-hour flight hanging on the plane’s landing gear until it landed in the Netherlands.
According to reports from Maastricht, the teen stowaway on Friday hang onto a Turkish Airlines cargo plane from the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) to Istanbul and later Maastricht Airport in the Netherlands.
He was rushed to hospital where he is recuperating from hypothermia. Due to the prolonged exposure to low temperatures, his body temperature dropped to dangerously low levels.
The Turkish Airlines Airbus A330 cargo flight left Nairobi for the Netherlands via Istanbul.
London’s Stansted Airport operated the Turkish Airlines cargo flight. At 19,000 feet, the cargo plane flew over the North Sea.
Dutch Royal Marechaussee, a police unit of the Netherlands Armed Forces issued a statement on the stowaway incident.
“De Marechaussee in Limburg doet verder onderzoek naar oa mogelijke mensensmokkel ivm de aangetroffen verstekeling die op Maastricht Aachen Airport werd aangetroffen bij het landingsgestel van een vliegtuig. De vermoedelijk 16-jarige Keniaanse jongen maakt het redelijk goed,” the statement read.
According to Simple Flying, Maastricht Airport said that the flight’s origin was London.
Dutch authorities have not shared more on the stowaway.
However, Maastricht Aachen Airport told Netherlands News Live that “He had tremendous luck to get through this.”
His is not an isolated case though rare. There have been reports of stowaways who ended up losing their lives as they battled with varying altitudes.
Most stowaways freeze to death while midair and their bodies fall off from the plane when the pilot readies for landing.
Heathrow Airport in London has had several of these cases in the past.
