Stowaway
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- There are three films named Stowaway.
A stowaway (also stoweaway) is a person who travels illegally, by aircraft, bus, ship or train.
Stowaways face dangerous situations. Since they are not legally on board, they must sometimes spend days without water or food when travelling by ship, risking death. An equal risk of death is taken when trying to board an aircraft. Usually, a stowaway tries to jump into an aircraft by hanging on to the airliner's landing gear as the plane takes off, and the impact that the velocity of the aircraft added to the power of the wind cause could easily make a stowaway fall to his death. Because people flying on aircraft as stowaways must stay within the landing gear area, they face other risks, such as falling when the plane is landing, or dying from the heat produced by the engines of the aircraft. Deaths from hypothermia, caused by the extreme cold at high altitudes, or lack of oxygen are also possible.
Stowaways also risk imprisonment, as it is illegal in most jurisdictions to embark on aircraft, boats or trains as stowaways. Airports, sea ports and train stations are typically marked as "No Trespassing" or "Private Property" zones to anyone but customers and employees.
There are several different reasons for which a person might try to become a stowaway, among them free transport and illegal immigration. Some also become stowaways as a dare or a way to get a thrill.
Yaguine Koita and Fodé Tounkara were stowaways who froze to death flying from Conakry, Guinea, to Brussels, Belgium, on 28 July 1999. Their bodies were later discovered in the aircraft's wheel bay. The boys were carrying a letter, written in imperfect French, which was widely published in the world media.
On May 9, 2004, two stowaways were severely injured when their flight, American Eagle Flight 1450 from Mayagüez, Puerto Rico to Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport in San Juan, Puerto Rico, crashed during landing. The stowaways were able to recover from the ordeal.
On June 8, 2005, the remains of a stowaway were found inside the wheel well of a South African Airways aircraft when it landed at John F. Kennedy International Airport, arriving from Johannesburg via Dakar, Senegal.
Since the September 11, 2001 attacks, it has become more difficult to be a stowaway onboard transportation arriving to or departing from the United States. Airport security has increased, and among the new security measures is watching over the fences from which stowaways usually gain entrance to an airport's runway.
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on January 28th, 2007, a 17 year old male from Cape Town, South Africa was found in the wheel well of a British Airways flight in Los Angeles, CA. He died from exposure as a stowaway on a previous flight and the body had not been immediately found. That flight had last been in Cape Town five days earlier, on January 23, 2007.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/2/hi/in_depth/6310659.stm
References for the original study of wheel well stowaways by Veronneau et al. in 1996:
http://www.faa.gov/library/reports/medical/oamtechreports/1990s/media/AM96-25.pdf
Aviat Space Environ Med. 1996 Aug;67(8):784-6.
The 1996 study was updated and published by The Flight Safety Foundation in 1997. http://www.flightsafety.org/hf/hf_may-jun97.pdf
