Colombia stowaways killed in gear up landing

[Cyclic Hotline]

Two Stowaways Found Dead in Miami-Bound Plane in Colombia

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- Two stowaways hiding in the landing gear of a Miami-bound cargo plane were killed Wednesday when the plane was forced to make a hard emergency landing in Colombia, officials said.

The two men, whose identities and nationalities were not yet known, were found dead by crews inspecting the plane after it landed at the international airport in Cali, Colombia's third-largest city, civil aviation director Juan Carlos Velez said.

The plane, a DC-8 belonging to the U.S. cargo company Arrow Air, took off from Cali for Miami, but was forced to return after its crew reported the forward landing gear -- where the men were hiding _ was stuck shut. The plane landed hard on the runway covered with foam, apparently causing the deaths on impact.

The landing gear problem may have been caused by provisions the castaways themselves stowed in the hold, including an oxygen tank and a suitcase full of clothing to withstand the thin air and freezing air during the flight, Velez said.

The flight arrived in Colombia from Quito, the capital of Ecuador, late Tuesday and took off early Wednesday from Cali. Officials were unsure whether the castaways boarded it in Ecuador or in Colombia. The plane suffered light damage, but its crew was unharmed.

[J-Class]

That's pretty terrible... but I'm impressed that outboard stowaways like this are now gearing up with warm clothes and oxygen to give themselves a racing chance at surviving the flight. It's a testament to the power of the global media that stories of people arriving encased in blocks of ice in the front gardens of Surrey have disseminated widely enough for these efforts to be made.

A few questions:

- absent the gear up landing which presumably crushed them, would they have survived with oxygen and warm clothes?

- if they knew how to get hold of an oxygen tank, why weren't they canny enough to beg, steal or borrow their way onto a commercial flight?

[Anti Skid On]

J-Class "if they knew how to get hold of an oxygen tank, why weren't they canny enough to beg, steal or borrow their way onto a commercial flight?"

They might have been able to purchase a passenger ticket, but would they have got through immigration? Little chance of sneaking off the airbridge and/or out of the terminal in broad daylight; now parked up at a cargo shed, that's a different story.

[Rogaine addict]

I heard that one of our flights a few years back from SDQ to JFK had the aft airstair door open and Dominicans scattering across the ramp as soon as the plane was in the blocks. Apparently the loaders had let them on because they were exiting through the aft entry door.