Miracle survivor: Nigerian man found alive in plane’s landing gear after flight from Algeria to Paris
A Nigerian man was found alive but in critical condition in the landing gear compartment of a plane that flew from Algeria to Paris on Thursday, French authorities said.
The man, who had no identification documents, was discovered by airport workers during technical checks after the Air Algerie flight from Oran landed at Paris’s Orly airport around 10 a.m., prosecutors told AFP.
He was suffering from severe hypothermia and was rushed to a nearby hospital, where he remained in intensive care, they said.
The man’s survival was described as a “miracle” by an airport source, who said he endured temperatures as low as -50 degrees Celsius (-58F) and a lack of oxygen at altitudes of up to 12,000 meters (40,000 feet).
The man is believed to be one of the rare cases of wheel-well stowaways, people who attempt to travel in the landing gear compartment of an aircraft, usually to escape poverty or persecution.
According to data from the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), 132 people tried to travel this way between 1947 and 2021, with a 77 percent mortality rate.
Some of the recent incidents involving wheel-well stowaways include:
– In April 2021, the body of a man was found in the landing gear of a plane at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport that had flown from Toronto, but previously took off from Nigeria.
– In December 2020, two passengers were found dead in the landing gear storage space of a flight between Santiago de Chile and Bogota.
– In July 2019, the frozen body of a man fell into a garden in a London suburb, believed to have been in the landing gear compartment of a Kenya Airways plane approaching Heathrow airport.
The French authorities have launched an investigation into the incident and are trying to establish the identity and motive of the Nigerian man.
Agence France-Presse (AFP) is a French international news agency headquartered in Paris, France. Founded in 1835 as Havas, it is the world’s oldest news agency.
