Stowaway who hid in plane wheel identified
A man who was found stowing away in the wheel well of a plane in Amsterdam has been identified.
Dutch police found the man on a cargo flight that had flown from Johannesburg to Amsterdam, a roughly 11 hour flight. The flight is believed to have made one stop, in Nairobi. At the time, Royal Dutch Military Police spokeswoman Joanna Helmonds told the AFP, "The man was found alive in the nose wheel section of the plane and was taken to hospital in a stable condition. It is quite remarkable that the man is still alive.”
Police have identified the man as a 22-year-old Kenyan who plans to seek asylum in the Netherlands. He is conscious and able to communicate. A spokesperson for the Dutch military police told the BBC, “It is expected he will apply for asylum in the Netherlands, but his medical treatment is the priority at the moment."
Stowing away in the wheel section of a plane is dangerous; according to the US Federal Aviation Administration, from 1947 to February 2020, 128 people around the world attempted it, and more than 75% of them died.
A particularly famous case was that of the man who fell out of the sky while stowing away on a flight to London from Nairobi. He fell from Kenya Airways flight KQ 100, landing in the southwest London neighbourhood of Clapham.
In the past five years, seven stowaways have been discovered on planes in the Netherlands, but only two of them survived the journey. Several of the attempts involved nationals from Nigeria and Kenya.
In 1970, Sydney teenager Keith Sapsford made headlines around the world when he fell 60 metres from the wheel well of a Japan Airlines flight soon after take off at Sydney’s Kingsford Smith Airport. Tragically, the 14-year-old, whose parents said he had an innate curiosity for travel, died on impact.
Image: Jun Xu