Ground Workers Find Body In Nose Gear Well At SFO

[austin552]

Stowing Away Attempted Often, Never Successful
Ground service workers at San Francisco International Airport got a grisly surprise Thursday morning, when they conducted a post-flight inspection of a United Airlines Boeing 747.

Employees found what appeared to be the body of a male, based on the clothing, inside the wheel well of the nose gear of United Flight 858 after it arrived from Shanghai, China. The gender was not readily apparent, airport spokesman Mike McCarron told The Mercury News.

Apparently, the person had crawled inside the nose gear's housing intentionally, suggesting an attempted stowaway, he said.

"It's not an easily accessible place."

Stowing away on a commercial jet like that "has been attempted, but it's never been successful," McCarron said.

"At altitude there's no air to breathe and it's maybe minus-40 degrees for 12 hours," he said. "You can't survive."

"People think they can make it into a country by hiding in a wheel well," said Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor.

"Almost invariably they get crushed to death, freeze to death, or fall to death."

However, there isn't much the US can do about it, he said.

"The security issue is with the origin airport."

Airport officials said there were no passengers on board the aircraft at the time of the discovery and the plane has been impounded, according to the Associated Press.

The San Mateo County Coroner's Office is investigating the exact cause of death.

FMI: www.united.com, www.flysfo.com

[onewhippedpuppy]

I can't believe people still try this. Just stupid.........

[widebody911]

A Cuban guy did this a few years ago and made it.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2002/12/09/cuban_stowaway021209.html

[herman maire]

If he was a terrorist with a bomb it would have been mission accomplished.... Idiot security at the airport should have spotted this looser.

[Mo_Gearhead]

Darwin at work again.

We should be so lucky, that any future terrorists are this dumb.

[JavaBrewer]

What's sad is that there are people desperate enough to try it...

[RoninLB]

I live close to Kennedy.

a few yrs ago at a friend's boat yard a huge splash erupted in about 2' of water next to the bulkhead. Naturally the Italian owner had to wait over 10hrs before the cops and feds figured out it was a plane drop instead of a mob hit.

[HardDrive]

Originally posted by herman maire
If he was a terrorist with a bomb it would have been mission accomplished.... Idiot security at the airport should have spotted this looser.

+1

WTF? All it would take is a few pounds of explosive to blow the front right off the plane. We waste billions on security, and we have this kind of schit going on....

[Normy]

I flew for American Eagle out of San Juan back in 1995. I owned a Fiat convertible on "Isla del encanto", and though there were many break-in's in the employee lot down there...I never had a problem. Then again, I usually put the top down and parked the car with the seats open to the weather. They were vinyl, but in a REALLY cool red color. That car was the COOLEST thing I have ever owned; These days I drive an '85 Porsche 928 S2 with a Louis Ott/ Borla exhaust. I wish this new car handled as well as the late, lamented Fiat Spyder...

Anyway- the gear compartments of passenger jets are indeed inviting. These are HUGE; I fly jets for Fedex, and though the wheel wells of the 727's I fly these days are obviously too small...I've seen the wheel well areas of Lockheed 1011's and the 747's I flew around the world as Captain for Kalitta Air. These gear compartments look like your living room.

-Back in 1995 when I flew people around the Caribbean in what we affectionately call "boxes with loud engines [Shorts SD3-60's for American Eagle/American Airlines], I heard a story that involved the other aircraft in our fleet, the Franco-Italian ATR72. Basically, when this airplane encounters ice, the design of the wing and the anti-ice system are weak. The long and short is that this plane's wing tends to stall near the tip and the result is the typical "tip stall" of planes built without washout. It want's to flip over, and people were killed on flight 4184 as a result.

Well, one of the ATR72's spent a day in Santo Domingo apparently. While it was there, some poor boy who worked the ramp decided to pop open both of the holders that hold the tail cone access door closed. This boy decided that he could close this door, and when the plane arrived in
San Juan, Puerto Rico, which is part of the United States....jump out on the runway and run for the trees.

Problem #1: ATR-72's typically fly at 25,000 feet. The plane's engines prefer this altitude, and the higher you go the better they run. They cannot leave 25k because the FAA won't certificate this aircraft for higher.

Problem #2: Human beings such as this boy cannot live for very long at 25,000 feet.

Problem #3: American Eagle does a good job of maintaining their aircraft. I flew for these people between 1995 and 1997, and let me tell you- the airplanes that I flew were SPOTLESS. There were NO problems with these planes. This is an ANAL company; their costs are high, they can't communicate at all with their employees...but they are the SAFEST in the industry. I'm Normy, I'm an airline pilot, and I just stated that publicly. I'd put my family on American Airlines first. I haven't worked for the AMR corp since 1996. At the same time, they don't check everything everyday. They didn't check the tailcone for a few days since it wasn't on the schedule. Despite the fact that the airplane smelled bad.

-three days later, a flight attendant on an American Eagle flight kept complaining about a strange smell. And it got written up.

::sigh:: deHavilland Canada built a near exact twin to the ATR aircraft...and I flew them. 1200 hours to be exact. DHC-8's will chug right on through 2 centimeters of ice like it wasn't even there. We used to race Continental Express and their ATR's out of Newark to our home base in Washington Dulles. Not only would we move through ice in our Canadian airplanes like it wasn't even there...but we would put 10 minutes on the French pigs. We had WAY better performance!

In any case, the ATR was written up in San Juan for a foul smell from the air conditioning. Sure enough, when they went into the tail-cone of an ATR72, they found a dead Dominican. Apparently, when this all was investigated after this death, they found that when these turboprop aircraft stopped short of the runway end in Santo Domingo at night....there was an organized group who collected thousands of dollars from immigrants and then shoved them into the open tail cones of ATR's waiting to take off. They didn't care if the people lived or died- they were only interested in MONEY. What a bunch of crap. Disgusting animals! I'd prefer it if the people behind this human smuggling die a horrid, painful death while squirming in their own ****.

Well, Santo Domingo to San Juan is about a 90 minute flight, but that's long enough to kill someone. Until they fix the fence down at Santo Domingo this will continue to be a problem. My understanding that that they have pop-riveted the door-open buttons on the ATR; The long and short is that if you have to go up there, then the rivet has to be ground off.

Sad~

[Zef]

Originally posted by HardDrive
+1

WTF? All it would take is a few pounds of explosive to blow the front right off the plane. We waste billions on security, and we have this kind of schit going on....

May be this guy was an airport or air transport company employee and got direct access to tarmac...