Two Foreigners Fall From Plane in China

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS


Filed at 9:01 a.m. ET

SHANGHAI, China (AP) -- Two people described as foreigners were killed Thursday when they fell out of an airplane as it prepared to land in Shanghai, the government said.

The two crawled out of the plane's luggage hold and toppled from the undercarriage of Flight AF112 from Paris to Shanghai, the official Xinhua News Agency said, citing a preliminary investigation by police officials. AF112 was an Air France flight from Paris, the airline said.

The unidentified people fell onto a house in the Laoxiang neighborhood of Shanghai's Nanhui District, Xinhua said. It was not clear if anyone on the ground was injured.

Officials did not immediately identify the two foreigners or release their nationalities.

Shanghai police started an investigation after the plane landed at Pudong International Airport at 11:05 a.m., an hour later than its scheduled arrival.

They confirmed the deaths, but refused to provide any details, citing the ongoing investigation.

An Air France spokeswoman in Shanghai, Zhuang Ying, confirmed that two people had fallen from an airplane.

"The police haven't made their final conclusions. They're still investigating,'' she said. "There were several airplanes in the sky at that moment.''

All passengers from the plane's main cabin left the plane safely, Xinhua said. Zhuang said every ticketed passenger on Flight AF112 was accounted for in Shanghai by the airline, suggesting the two may have stowed away.

The aircraft was held at the airport while the investigation continued, Xinhua said. Zhuang said Air France canceled Flight 111, which was scheduled to return to Paris on Thursday afternoon using the same aircraft.

How on earth do they know the first part of this?

Apparently some luggage fell from the plane as well. I saw a brief shot on TV of a house with a large hole in the roof, said to have been caused by luggage falling from the sky.

That's a first - people trying to smuggle themselves into China. Traffic has traditionally been in the other direction.

Apparently both stowaways are described in the media as "Male with caucasian origins." They were basically frozen solid by the time the a/c reached cruising altitude.

A frozen corpse would make a pretty big hole in one's roof too....

Maybe it was the stowaways' luggage!

AF112 shows to be a 777. I don't get the supposed path from hold to landing gear. A long way from the aft bulk hold to the gear. ??? If in the hold they would have had to open the door from the inside. A considerable feat for frozen hunks of meat. They must have mistaken that flight for the Tahiti run.

Yeah, yeah, they were so ignorant and stupid, but let's go watch their Moms and Dads to see if they laugh when they hear about it.

Is there access to the hold from the wheelwell? Very much doubt it, the 747 doesn't have it. I think we have 2 unfortunate adventurers simply fall frozen solid out of the wheelwell with their assorted bags. A sad, unpleasant way to meet ones end. Where the incident happened is irrelevant- I don't think 2 caucasian types would be trying to infiltrate China

Methinks that there is an awful lot of translation to english problems here which are being further translated by the reader into something that correlates with the mistated facts.

Probably best to let it go until the source comes from normal aviation sources.

At times Pprunners amaze me. Surely the issue here is how did these poor souls get through security. If stowaways can get on board, current security is a joke.

ZFT, see the thread named "Stupid Stunt". These characters don't need to go through security - they climb the fence. ( More fence climbing in the Swiss papers today, as "protestors" of the World Economic Forum go through their paces at Kloten Airport. )

I'm certain they didn't board the wheel well via the departure gate. Makes you wonder what kind of boarding pass they had?! This appears to be a recurring incident. A wonder it's not mentioned in the Darwin awards. We had one drop out on landing at Haneda in the early seventies.

Anyone considered they were not trying to travel Paris -> China. They intended travel from somewhere else to Paris, died shortly after takeoff, and have been in the wheel wells since. Just happened to fall out at this stage.

Certainly not unknown - in BA's recent experience someone had quite a number of sectors in a wheel well. Certain types you cannot view the wells on the external inspection - requires doors opening, hence why it is the engineers who sometimes find them.... if they don't fall out first.

Few Cloudy

<<ZFT, see the thread named "Stupid Stunt". These characters don't need to go through security - they climb the fence>>

Please credit me with some grains of intelligence. Of course they climbed a bloody fence (or through a drain). My point was that if some poor, desperate characters can get onto an aircraft in CDG then passenger checks, locked flight deck doors, plastic cutlery etc.. are all a waste of time.

ZFT, OK I credit you. What you wrote, however was "Surely the issue here is how did these poor souls get through security."

As I said... a good chance it wasn't CDG security they breached, but elsewhere...

NoD

NigelOnDraft:

The B777 originally came from LAX, (Possibly AF065) from what I saw in the news.

Could have been there for days. Similar incident at YYZ recently: one unfortunate stowaway was found in the wheelwell of a Skyservice bus who'd been travelling with the a/c for five days.

Few Cloudy,

Security is not just boarding gate checks. If airport security is so easy to breach, and events at LGW and LHR recently seem to indicate it is, all other (ticketed) passenger security checks are pretty meaningless.
If economic refugees can get onto an aircraft with such apparent impunity, then what chance is there to stop hardcore terrorists