A man was discovered on Thursday hidden in the landing gear compartment of a commercial aircraft that flew to Paris from Algeria with severe hypothermia, but alive, French authorities said.
The man, believed to be in his 20s, was found during technical checks after the Air Algerie flight from Oran, Algeria, landed at Orly airport in Paris in mid-morning, prosecutors said.
He had no identification on him and was taken to hospital in serious condition, they said.
An airport source earlier reported that the man “was alive, but in a life-threatening condition because of severe hypothermia.”
Commercial aircraft cruise at 9,000m to 12,000m altitude where temperatures typically drop to about minus-50°C, and a lack of oxygen makes survival unlikely for anyone traveling in a landing gear compartment which is neither heated nor pressurized.
According to US Federal Aviation Administration data, 132 people — known in the industry as wheel-well stowaways — tried to travel in the landing gear compartments of commercial aircraft between 1947 and 2021.
The body of a man was discovered in April in the landing gear of an aircraft in Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport that had flown in from Toronto, but previously took off from Nigeria.
Four months earlier, two passengers were found dead on arrival in the landing gear storage space of a flight between Santiago de Chile and Bogota.
The frozen body of a man in July 2019 fell into a garden in a suburb of London, believed to have been in the landing gear compartment of a Kenya Airways plane approaching Heathrow airport.
The mortality rate for people attempting to travel this way is 77 percent, the US Federal Aviation Administration data showed.
RARE EVENT: While some cultures have a negative view of eclipses, others see them as a chance to show how people can work together, a scientist said Stargazers across a swathe of the world marveled at a dramatic red “Blood Moon” during a rare total lunar eclipse in the early hours of yesterday morning. The celestial spectacle was visible in the Americas and Pacific and Atlantic oceans, as well as in the westernmost parts of Europe and Africa. The phenomenon happens when the sun, Earth and moon line up, causing our planet to cast a giant shadow across its satellite. But as the Earth’s shadow crept across the moon, it did not entirely blot out its white glow — instead the moon glowed a reddish color. This is because the
Romania’s electoral commission on Saturday excluded a second far-right hopeful, Diana Sosoaca, from May’s presidential election, amid rising tension in the run-up to the May rerun of the poll. Earlier this month, Romania’s Central Electoral Bureau barred Calin Georgescu, an independent who was polling at about 40 percent ahead of the rerun election. Georgescu, a fierce EU and NATO critic, shot to prominence in November last year when he unexpectedly topped a first round of presidential voting. However, Romania’s constitutional court annulled the election after claims of Russian interference and a “massive” social media promotion in his favor. On Saturday, an electoral commission statement
Chinese authorities increased pressure on CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd over its plan to sell its Panama ports stake by sharing a second newspaper commentary attacking the deal. The Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office on Saturday reposted a commentary originally published in Ta Kung Pao, saying the planned sale of the ports by the Hong Kong company had triggered deep concerns among Chinese people and questioned whether the deal was harming China and aiding evil. “Why were so many important ports transferred to ill-intentioned US forces so easily? What kind of political calculations are hidden in the so-called commercial behavior on the
‘DOWNSIZE’: The Trump administration has initiated sweeping cuts to US government-funded media outlets in a move critics said could undermine the US’ global influence US President Donald Trump’s administration on Saturday began making deep cuts to Voice of America (VOA) and other government-run, pro-democracy programming, with the organization’s director saying all VOA employees have been put on leave. On Friday night, shortly after the US Congress passed its latest funding bill, Trump directed his administration to reduce the functions of several agencies to the minimum required by law. That included the US Agency for Global Media, which houses Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and Asia and Radio Marti, which beams Spanish-language news into Cuba. On Saturday morning, Kari Lake, a former Arizona gubernatorial and US
RSS