By Alisha Rahaman Sarkar
Copyright independent
An Afghan teenager miraculously survived a perilous journey to India after hiding inside the wheel cabinet of an aircraft, only to be returned home within two hours.
The 13-year-old boy from Kunduz, carrying only what appeared to be a red speaker, had snuck inside the Kabul airport on Sunday morning and stowed away in a plane’s rear wheel well, media reports said.
The teenager reportedly wanted to travel to Iran but mistakenly snuck in the wheel cabinet of a Kam Air flight bound for New Delhi. The plane landed at the New Delhi international airport at around 10.20am local time.
The boy survived the 94-minute journey unscathed.
He was seen loitering around the restricted area of Terminal 3 by airline staff, caught, and handed over to the Central Industrial Security Force. He was subsequently taken in by immigration authorities for questioning.
“An aircraft security check was conducted by the airline’s security and engineering staff during which a red-coloured audio speaker was found in the rear landing gear area,” the security force said in a statement.
The boy said he had snuck into Kabul airport, tailed the legitimate passengers and somehow managed to get inside the rear central landing gear compartment, PTI news agency reported.
He was repatriated to Kabul on the same Kam Air aircraft, which departed at around 12.30pm, the news agency reported.
Indian officials considered the teenager’s ability to hide inside the wheel well a major security breach, according to local reports.
Surviving inside an aircraft’s wheel well is extremely rare, with most stowaways succumbing to hypoxia, hypothermia, or injuries from landing gear mechanisms.
“After takeoff, the wheel bay door opens, the wheel retracts and the door closes,” aviation expert Mohan Ranganathan told the New Indian Express.
The teenager “likely entered this enclosed space which may have been pressurised, maintaining a temperature similar to the passenger cabin”, Mr Ranganathan added.
“He could have clung to internal structures to survive.”
Without such conditions, survival at 30,000 feet would be impossible, Mr Ranganathan explained.
While low oxygen levels cause rapid unconsciousness and death at above 10,000ft, temperatures between -40C and -60C lead to frostbite in under a minute, followed by hypothermia.
Of the 128 cases of stowaways assessed by the US Federal Aviation Administration between 1947 and 2020, more than 75 per cent ended in death due to the extreme dangers of the wheel well.
Mary Schiavo, former inspector general of the transportation department, previously told CBS that survivors could suffer long-term physical damage from the noise, lack of oxygen, and freezing temperatures in the wheel well.
In January, two teenagers were found dead in the landing gear of a JetBlue aircraft. Jeik Aniluz Lusi, 18, and Elvis Borques Castillo, 16, were discovered during a routine post-flight maintenance inspection at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood international airport, Florida, on 6 January, officials said.
The Independent has reached out to Kam Air and the Kabul international airport for comment.
