A 16-year old boy, who apparently ran away from home, hopped a fence at Mineta San Jose International Airport Sunday, climbed into the wheel well of a Hawaiian Airlines flight to Maui - and survived the 5-½ ride in extraordinarly harsh conditions.
Video footage from both airports bear out the main facts, that the boy did indeed hop the fence in California and emerge from the wheel well of the Boeing 767 in Hawaii.
The question is, 'How?'
You'd be surprised.
"Once he hopped the fence and got to the plane it was easy," aviation expert Kirk Koenig told TravelPulse.com this morning. Koenig is the president of Indianapolis-based Expert Aviation Consulting.
"Once you have circumvented the security it's extremely easy to crawl up on the tire, up through the landing gear and into the wheel well area. It's pretty big. You can hide - if you're careful - you can hide yourself in there because the cargo doors are in a different spot."
Koenig said a plane's tires, like on the Boeing 767 the boy stowed away in, are more than five feet tall.
"When it retracts it goes up into the wheel well area and into the fuselage and all that stuff, al that has to go up and be covered up," he said. "And he must have been in a perfect spot too, because some of these wheel well instances the landing gear crushes them. I just don't know how he survived the flight."
PHOTO: The wheel well of a 767 houses five-foot-tall tires with room for little else. (Courtesy of Wikipedia)
How he managed that in the portion of an aircraft that isn't pressurized and can reach temperatures of 40 degrees below zero has most experts baffled.
ABC News aviation expert John Nance said, "I just don't believe it," and wondered if the teen had some sort of oxygen source. Medical experts say it is possible for someone to slip into an unconscious state at 38,000 feet and yet survive with the heart beating just a few times a minute.
More baffling, however, is how he breached security and got inside the plane.
Swalwell (D-Calif.) is a member of the Homeland Security Committee.
Hawaiian Airlines declined comment, saying in a statement "Our primary concern now is the well being of the boy, who is exceptionally lucky to have survived. Hawaiian and its contractors responsible for handling our aircraft in San Jose are ready to assist various government agencies in their investigation of this incident."
A Federal Aviation Administration study of 10 wheel-well incidents over almost a 50-year period showed five survivors.
For the latest travel news, updates and deals, subscribe to the daily TravelPulse newsletter.
Topics From This Article to Explore
