According to the teen, he stowed away in the wheel well of flight 45.
Ever wonder if you could survive in a plane’s wheel well, like in the movies? Well, a 16-year-old boy might have just tested the theory. Originally from Santa Clara, California, the boy stowed away on a Hawaiian Airlines flight destined for Hawaii.
Security footage shows him jumping the fence at the San Jose airport to get to flight 45, bound for Maui. At least he chose a good destination.
If it proves to be true – and it might well not be – then the teen travelled almost 2,500 miles at a height of 38,000 feet. Temperatures up there hover around a balmy 80 below zero.
Five-and-a-half hours after it took off, the plane landed on Maui, the teenager jumped down and was found wandering around the airport. When he was discovered on the tarmac with no identification, more than a few questions were asked. “The odds of a person surviving that long of a flight at that altitude are very remote, actually,” said Airlines analyst Peter Forman to KHON-TV. “I mean, you are talking about altitudes that are well above the altitude of Mount Everest… A lot of people would only have useful consciousness for a minute or two at that altitude. For somebody to survive multiple hours with that lack of oxygen and that cold is just miraculous. I’ve never heard of anything like that before.”
According to the Washington Post, a study by the Federal Aviation Administration looked at 10 wheel-well passenger stowaways between 1947 and 1993. The flights included were higher than 39,000 feet, and five people survived. The conditions put them in a virtual ‘hibernative’ state, the report said. So it is a possibility that the Hawaiian stow-away is telling the truth.
He told investigators that after the plane took off, he lost consciousness, the woke up in Hawaii, where he crawled out of the plane. The Maui airport has video of him leaving the landing gear. So far, he has not been charged with a federal crime in Hawaii, but he was referred to child protective services.
