As someone who flew the 747 Classic for 23 years and who, inadvertently, carried a stowaway who died, may I be allowed to comment?
First, the comments of any professional pilots who refer in disparaging terms to “these people” and “idiots” and who glibly talk of “a mate down the pub” who allegedly acted deliberately to kill an African stowaway are shameful and racist.
Second is the very serious issue indeed of security. If it is possible, on a regular, if mercifully infrequent basis, for highly motivated, but incredibly ignorant Third World young males to stow away on our aircraft, it is also possible for highly motivated young people to climb on board and plant bombs in wheel wells or to secrete themselves as human bombs in wheel wells.
That so many stowaways are successful in stowing away, if not surviving, is a sign that the airline industry is failing disastrously to address this appalling problem with potentially catastrophic consequences. Once a stowaway is dead, is there any security implication in his body not being found for some time? It is the ability to climb into the aeroplane with a bomb that is the threat which the industry is failing to successfully address.
Regards
Stoic