[TigerLikesRooster]

Ping!

[Raycpa]

Imagine what a terrorist could have done.

[JustAnotherOkie]

This just up...FAA mandates seatbelts in wheel wells.

[NASBWI]

Very unfortunate incident, and I'll be willing to bet that somewhere, someone is blaming Airbus. *rolls eyes*

[Jet Jaguar]

ping.

[Yo-Yo]

Next time I fly China Eastern Airlines, remind me to ask for an upgrade to Business Class.

[TXBSAFH]

It blows when the deceleration curve is linear.

[Smokin' Joe]

If'n he'd Dunhuang'd on a little better....

[csvset]

Oh, big ol' jet airliner...
Won't you carry me away..
Oh, big ol' jet airliner...

[GladesGuru]

No tickee - No ridee

[U S Army EOD]

What the media doesn't say is the other sixty passeners packed in the wheel wells made it without any probem. They always report the bad news and none of the good.

[theDentist]

Sorry Peter Pan, but:

High up, and as light as I can be.
I must be a sight lovely to see.
I'm flying.
Nothing will stop me now:
Higher still look at how
I can zoom around,
'Way up off the ground
I'm flying.
I fly and I'm all over the place
You try and you fall flat on your face.

----------------splat-----

[ScreamingFist]

Landing gear wells have been used in the past to fly to freedom. Try Readers Digest if you disbelieve. And a kid is dead, try not to be such a bunch of asses.

[Criminal Number 18F]

This kind of thing happens from time to time. I recall a story of two young Africans (and I mean young, maybe 12 years old) who thought Air France was their freedom bird.

They were found in the wheelwells near the point of death, but on opposite sides of it. I think the French relented and let the surviving kid stay after he recovered in hospital.

Back in the days that Life magazine was a weekly staple in American households, our copy once contained a feature called "moments of truth" which was just another peg for the left-liberal editors to use to gloat over some Vietnam deaths -- but one of the pictures was a grainy shot of a would-be wheel rider in mid-fall. I think that was the end of our family's subscription to that rag, actually. It went out of business some time after that but ill-advised people keep bringing it back.

The problems with stowing away in a wheelwell are manifold.

1. Volume. A human being just takes up a certain space in three dimensions. Mechanical parts' intrusion on this space can be fatal. In most aircraft, the landing gear retract into parts of the plane where space is already at a premium.

2. Hanging on. As noted in the article, the landing gear aren't retracted until the pilots are confident that they have a solid rate of climb. Until then, you have to hang on. Even after the gear are retracted, even if they didn't squeeze you like an anaconda, you still have to hang on, because if you fall onto the gear doors, they probably won't hold you. Geronimo!

3. Temperature: It's cold out there! Jets fly in or near the stratosphere -- but the troposphere contains almost all the warmth needed to sustain life. A wheel well at 40,000 feet is at -65F. Good thick mittens can help you not lose your fingers, but how are you going to hang on? (see above).

4. Pressure. There is very, very little air pressure here. At altitudes above about 25-26,000 feet, there is not enough partial pressure of oxygen to sustain life. Survivors risk brain and central nervous system damage.

In fact, a fairly common outcome in these cases is that the would-be stowaway (stowawannabee?) expires some time during the flight and is found in a later aircraft inspection, or when he begins to ripen, or falls when the landing gear go down, already a dead, frozen, stowaway-sicle.

There are some aircraft that are better suited than others to attempting this. I will not go into which ones they are for reasons which need no elaboration. As a rule of thumb, however, older machinery is better than newer for this, as engineers have gotten more creative about using space.

Sorry about the kid. But if the lust for adventure is not tempered with a little bit of learning, the sum of your life may be naught but a warning to those that come behind you, and that seems to have been his fate.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

[wjimmy]

too bad! and security sucks, what if that's a bomb?