Body found in landing gear

Captain Slow IRL

Japanese authorities were seeking American help Monday to identify a body found in the landing gear compartment of a plane that arrived in Tokyo from New York.

A mechanic made the grim discovery after Delta Flight 59 landed at Tokyo's Narita International Airport about 6:05 p.m. local time Sunday, a Chiba prefecture police spokesman said.

The victim, believed to be a stowaway, was a black man clad in a long-sleeved, plaid shirt and jeans, police said.

The body, found inside of the door of the landing gear storage compartment on the Boeing 777, had no visible injuries except signs of frostbite.

The temperature in that part of the plane falls to about 58 degrees below zero during flight, officials said.

"Doctors say he probably froze to death and that he suffered a shortage of oxygen" at an altitude of more than about 30,000 feet, a police official said.

"We found no passport, no bag and no personal belongings," the official said. "If he carried any luggage, it must have all dropped out when the airplane opened up the hatch of the landing gear bay above the ocean before it landed."

Police are investigating the case both as an accident and a possible crime, officials said. Japan was seeking help from U.S. police to identify him.

Delta officials were not immediately available for comment.

There have been similar cases in the past.

In 2003, a man's body was found in the main landing gear storage compartment of a jet that landed at Narita Airport on a flight from Hong Kong. In 2007, a man was found dead in the nose gear wheel well on a United Airlines Boeing 747 that arrived at San Francisco International Airport from Shanghai.

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That's a pretty gruesome way to die

Run_to_da_hills

Gruesome way to die but it also displays a very serious lack of security. Despite all these xray scanners and biometric passports that the authorities put us through, people from off the street can still sneak into the under carriage of an aircraft with god knows what.

pclancy

Hopefully he passed out before it got too horrible Poor fecker probably just wanted a new chance somewhere and obviously didnt realize the gear bays arent heated or pressurized.

scudzilla

I guess i've nothing to say on this

staker

Seeing he had no luggage, that could've been it alright.
It maddens me to think how much time and effort they put into searching me and scanning me, and this happens!
Poor fellow though, ignorance really cost him.

krd

pclancy wrote: »

Hopefully he passed out before it got too horrible Poor fecker probably just wanted a new chance somewhere and obviously didnt realize the gear bays arent heated or pressurized.

He would have been long dead before he even felt cold.

It's impossible to breath at 10,000 feet. He would have just passed out from lack of oxygen after a few minutes. I think it's not even like suffocating. The air gets thin and you faint.

I've heard from a good source - before pressurised planes. WWII bomber's oxygen systems would occasionally fail, the crew might all pass out together not realising anything was wrong. Since the bombers didn't have autopilot they'd either climb or dive. As long as the crew weren't cut off for too long, they would come to, as the plane dived into thicker air. (my source for this information, was a doctor who treated a bomber crew this happened to. They all survived but they all had brain damage from oxygen deprivation.)

Tea 1000

It's very possible to breath at 10,000 feet alright. You'd probably be better off if you had time to adjust on the way to that altitude however. But I was in an unpressurised plane at about 12,000 feet. Aer Lingus's Shorts 360's weren't pressurised.
You'd probably get away with 20,000 feet if you got there gradually with only occasional oxygen assist. Mountain climbers would know this info better however, but I do know that 10k unassisted is fine.

GavRedKing

Very bad way to go, the security impact and procedures though for this to happen is a joke.

Its hard to speculate how he got there, through crooked ground staff or by hiding it out on airport grounds, all in all not a nice way to go.

donkey balls

Tea 1000 wrote: »

It's very possible to breath at 10,000 feet alright. You'd probably be better off if you had time to adjust on the way to that altitude however. But I was in an unpressurised plane at about 12,000 feet. Aer Lingus's Shorts 360's weren't pressurised.
You'd probably get away with 20,000 feet if you got there gradually with only occasional oxygen assist. Mountain climbers would know this info better however, but I do know that 10k unassisted is fine.

Having climbed in the himalaya/andes altitude sickness does not kick in untill 12,000ft,most people can climb upto 22,000ft without supplimentry oxygen the whole idea is you acclimatise slowly.

if you go upto fast you risk getting HACE/ HAPE(high altitude cerebral edema/high altitude pulmonary edema )which will kill you over a few hours.