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Out of thin air: the mystery of the man who fell from the sky
- secondcoming 6y agoIs the wheel well directly accessible from within the plane itself? If the pilot were made aware of someone in the wheel well during the flight would they still lower the gear when landing?
- walrus01 6y agono, it's not, and separated by bulkheads from the pressurized area. I'm not aware of any wheel wells that have anything like an intrusion sensor.
- lgeorget 6y agoWell, you have to land at some point and doing it without the landing gear lowered would put in danger the life of all crew members and passengers so... Belly landing can be done and have occurred in the past of course but it's certainly not without risk.
- Clewza313 6y agoYou could maybe risk a landing without the front wheel, but the article notes that stowaways prefer the larger rear wheels, which take the brunt of the impact on landing and are thus also much more dangerous to land without.
- spoonjim 6y agoThe wheel well is not accessible from the plane. And of course the pilot would lower the gear when landing, they are not going to do a belly landing and destroy tens of millions of dollars of property and risk everyone on board's life to try to save one stowaway.
- twic 6y agoA belly landing is probably not great for anyone in the wheel well either.
- FearlessNebula 6y agoIt would become an oven
- walrus01 6y agoThe fact that random desperate people can get into the wheel wells of planes like this, from the supposedly "secure" air side of foreign airports, is a general risk to aviation security.
- lostlogin 6y agoI’m not sure where you are, but this probably isn’t something that can only happen in foreign lands. It’s just that people in wealthier/better places are less likely to try it. The article mentions a US case.
- londons_explore 6y agoOne would imagine that anyone desperate enough to do something with a 75% fatality rate and hide in the wheel well of a plane would also research which wheel wells have space for a person and exactly how to tie oneself on to prevent falls...
- pantalaimon 6y agoI think the key to doing this is not knowing about the 75% fatality rate
- JPLeRouzic 6y agoYes, probably if this person has access to Internet and has knowledge of the specialized vocabulary in aviation in a foreign language. Yet I can't imagine myself being able to find the necessary information to hide safely inside a plane doing a long distance flight (and to survive -40° for several hours).
- tim333 6y agoYeah I guess someone capable of that would also be capable of earning a bit of money and buying a ticket.
- londons_explore 6y agoFor many people even millions of dollars wouldn't be sufficient. Citizenship in many cases can't be bought. (No birth/id records, criminal past, unlucky country of birth, etc)
- shakow 6y agoWith millions of dollars, you can buy convenience passports in e.g. Kazakhstan or Bulgaria. Not the most powerful passports in the world, but enough to get visas for a lot of Western places.
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- londons_explore 6y agoThe altitude a plane flies at varies quite a bit based on weather and flight traffic conditions right? And some altitudes are very survivable, especially for someone who normally lives at a high altitude. Is it plausible these flights normally take low altitude routes but for some reason diverted over a storm or weather system killing the hitchhiker's?
- walrus01 6y agoIt would be exceedingly rare for a typical long haul flight of 3-4 hours or more to not climb to FL320 or higher.
- fgonzag 6y agoTerminal velocity is reached relatively quickly, in about 7 seconds IRC. You hit the ground at the same speed falling from a not so tall sky scraper as you do from the plane. Surviving the impact is more about position, which material you are smashing into, and if you hit any objects right before hitting the ground in order to break your fall.
- grandchild 6y agoI think the parent had the temperature and oxygen levels at various altitudes in mind, not the survival rate of falling.
- tim333 6y agoThe long haul flights pretty much all cruise between 30,000 and 40,000 feet, usually about 36,000. People seem to black out at those altitudes but some live and regain consciousness on descent. For comparison the top of Everest is 29,000 ft and people can function there without O2 after a month or so of acclimatization. If you are going try it I'd definitely take a climbing harness and some rope and try to tie yourself in.
- WalterBright 6y agoI've read that the summit of Everest is a "death zone" where you are literally slowly dying, and the idea is to descend before you die. Brain scans show permanent damage from people who summit. Nobody has stayed there more than a few hours. People who run a business guiding other people to the summit are fools. If you want a beautiful view from the top of Everest, hire an airplane.
- rwmj 6y agoThis grim event happens in London with some regularity. The article notes some earlier cases but not the possibly most famous one of Jose Matadata who was found in a street in West London. Initially it was thought he had been a victim of a hit-and-run (car accident where the driver doesn't stop). The story was later made into a film (https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/film/new-film-over-tells-tragic-story-of-man-who-fell-to-earth-a3157591.html https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/film/new-film-over-tells-...) and BBC documentary (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25576086 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25576086). There was also one man who managed to survive (mentioned indirectly in the parent article): https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/stowaway-tells-how-survived-5600-23255100 https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/stowaway-tells-how-sur...
- NetOpWibby 6y agoWhat a fantastically depressing collection of stories. Quite terrifying to think about.
- tiku 6y agoWhy is this called a mystery? Seems quite clear to me.
- Blahah 6y agoThe mystery is the identity of the man.
- tomcam 6y agoLondon is experiencing extremely high rates of violent crimes that have a much better chance of being solved than this one, to which comparatively vast and expensive amounts of police resources were dedicated with no hope of helping the victims of London crime. Property crimes are through the roof there and are pretty much ignored. As with cities like New York and Seattle, it feels like the priorities may be a bit askew.
- kylehotchkiss 6y agoWhy don’t airlines spend $1000 a plane (3 older gopros and some streaming hardware) on some cameras that ground crew can check before a plane departs? This specific form of stowaway seems like it could be solved with a slight additional pre-flight checklist item before pushing back
- loloquwowndueo 6y agoIf it’s installed in the airplane it has to undergo testing and certification by regulating bodies, this inflates the cost beyond what airlines are willing to invest to save lives. Look for articles about small trivial tweaks to airplanes and the time / cost they incur, it’s insane and stratospheric.
- JackFr 6y ago> this inflates the cost beyond what airlines are willing to invest to save lives I don’t know. If you climb into the wheel well and die, that’s kind of on you, not the airline.
- alexvoda 6y agoIf you climb into the wheel well and break something (electric cables, etc.) and cause the plane to crash, that's on the airline.
- rwmj 6y agoIt costs far far more than $1000 / plane, but modern planes do have cameras around them (Airbus ETACS is one such system).
- whalesalad 6y agoThis is a very well written piece. I read it last night before bed and couldn’t stop till the end. Very sad, very interesting at the same time.
- unobatbayar 6y agoToo long to read, I honestly tried... Someone please make a TLDR app and summarize the main content.
- smn1234 6y agoalways wanted for something like this, it'd be a browser plugin at best
- c22 6y agoIt's your lucky day - https://tldrthis.com/ https://tldrthis.com/
- llacb47 6y agoIt's meant to be a long read.
- fiftyacorn 6y agoThe article will prob be on the long read podcast in next few weeks