PAXboy
Not necessarily.
US AIR (and others) have layover checks performed down the line. :ok:

My point is that at least the body would be found after one flight. It doesn't exactly look good when a body is flown several sectors when it really should have been discovered at the next transit.

I seem to recall (now don't quote me, but if anyone has the official version) an Air Polynesian B737 with a main landing gear failing to extend. Landed on the runway with much damage. Subsequent investigation revealed a stowaway in the wheel well. Plenty of room when the gear is down, yet when retracted the unfortunate bugger was crushed and the spilt fluids froze the gear up. Not pretty.

Maybe burglar alarm technology could be used to detect stowaways? I guess false alarms could be avoided with careful design.

Never say never.......

The Daily Telegraph today states “ The body of a South African teenager found in the wheel well of a British airway’s jet at Los Angeles airport may have been there for almost a week, officials indicated yesterday.
It is believed that Samual Peter Benjamin, 17, crept aboard the aircraft at Cape Town, his home town, before it left on Jan 22. His body was found by a pilot in the nose wheel well of the Boeing 747 during a routine inspection at Los Angeles international airport just before take off on Sunday (28th Jan 2007). The flight had arrived from Heathrow several hours earlier, but had previously stopped at Singapore, Vancouver, Hong Kong and Cape Town.”
Makes one wonder how the body had not been detected before.
Are the undercarriage bays not subject of inspections during After Flight, Before Flight or Turn round servicing? If not in view of the many previous occurrences of people trying to stow-away in the undercarriage bays should not a requirement for such inspections be added to the schedules?

As someone who has worked in the security industry ... i would be cautious about placeing electronic intrustion detection systems in such a location.

firstly being an unpressurised, non temprature controled area, you have the possibility or indeed proberbility of leaving the components operating temprature range, with unknown results. even if you stay within temp range for the components, condensation is an issue, and can cause both false activations and nil activations
secondly, there is a definate proberbility of both false positives and false negitives in the detection system its self, .. assuming that it *never* leaves is design paramiters.

false postives are annoying and would largely cause air/ground crew to learn to ignore the alarm if possible. False negitives would result in no alarm activation, should an intruder decide to enter that area.
False positive/negitive statuses become more likely as the equipment ages as well.


the net result would be a loosening of the guard against stowaways, on the blithe assumption that 1, the alarm will get it, and 2, when the alarm activates, its a false alarm

i would support more and greater depth ground checks by .. well humans.

If gear bay doors cannot be signaled open for inspection, maybe this should be raised with the manufacturers?

Fascinated to know what Orographic does now...teach 'speling' presumably?
Securaplane would be devastated to hear how unlikely their equipment would be to work in such a hostile environment. Many corporate operators have installed Securaplane for passive security monitoring and this includes motion sensors in all wheel wells (just like the ones you have at home for your burglar alarm).
In the event of someone poking their head (or more) into any of the WWs, both the time and location of the intrusion is recorded. The operator would then visually inspect the relevant bay and eject any foreign body(sic!). This would appear to offer a fairly cheap and viable solution to a tragic problem.

Well how about camara's in the nose wheel bays?
:yuk:

Paradise lost, what I currently do for a paying job is .. monitering alarm systems( *shrug* it pays for my flying ).
standard PIR's ( paasive infared sensors ... "motion detectors" to those who do not undarstand how they work) would be unsutable to that environment, and for the reasions specified. How do I know this? Because every other day I have to send patrols out to sites where very similer false activations are occuring, wasting their time as well as mine, in order to verify that the activations are, in fact, false, and the reasion for the activation is a well known condition that the owner of the premises has been advised of time and again. I have also had to explain to site owners why alarms did not activate when they had been broken into and thousands of dollers of stock taken. Given that, I think that I can say that there would be some minor risk in trusting such technology, ne?

Certainly special use componentry could be manufactured for that enviroment, I never claimed it could not. However standard OTS componentry would be unsutable. While I have not researched what the company that you have sited, uses in their systems, i would hope they are useing a specialist use component set and are providing a comprehensive servicing setup for those aircraft. If not, then those alarms are worse than useless. Human nature will mean that in an environment with a large number of false status events, people will start ignoring the alarms.

If you need further proof of that point, just watch the vast and sweeping reaction, next time someones car or house alarm goes off.
Infact if a home alarm system is left sounding for more than a few seconds, it tends to be used by offenders as an indication that no-one is home and its safe to continue the break.

oh and the biggest causes of false alarms?
Moisture in the circutry, Moisture or insects in front of the apature,twigs, a truck driving past outside, a "hot spot" against a cooler background ( or infact any steep enough temprature differential. not actually a failure mode, as this is precisely what a PIR "looks" for, not movement as a most people seem to think. infact it can't look for movement because it has no memory retention at all. all sorts of things can cause this effect, a human body is only one of those. others i have seen have been air conditioning outlets, a fax machine, and an ember falling out of a fire grate and into the detection zone of the PIR.)

Oh, and Paradise, i realise that my spelling is a little suspect at times, however one thing that i have learned in my time, is that the concept of security , for anything that you cannot sit and eyeball 24/7, is a myth. It ultimately comes down to what do you beleave you can trust.

By far the most reliable alarm system if the mk1 eyeball.



G-OPCON, possible the only concerns I would have, are positioning the camera so that the widest possble coverage could be maintained, and ensuring the coax to the cameras was protected from tampering. other than that, that would be a reasionable solution.

Maintance would be an issue, as would ensuring the non-contamination of the len ( the "body " of the camera and circutry could be sealed, rendering moisture in circut irrelivant at the camera end, the same would have to be ensured at the viewing/processing/transmitting end)

ok so CCTV would be a realistic contender for a partial solution, assuming mounts and cable runs could be suitably situated and protected...

Forgive me - is this still the "PROFESSIONAL PILOTS" forum??

VSB via OL stated "Forgive me - is this still the "PROFESSIONAL PILOTS" forum??"
I must admit I support his question.
As stated at an earlier post I wrote "The Daily Telegraph today states “ The body of a South African teenager found in the wheel well of a British airway’s jet at Los Angeles airport may have been there for almost a week, officials indicated yesterday.
It is believed that Samual Peter Benjamin, 17, crept aboard the aircraft at Cape Town, his home town, before it left on Jan 22. His body was found by a pilot in the nose wheel well of the Boeing 747 during a routine inspection at Los Angeles international airport just before take off on Sunday (28th Jan 2007). The flight had arrived from Heathrow several hours earlier, but had previously stopped at Singapore, Vancouver, Hong Kong and Cape Town.”
My experience is based on many years maintaining military aircraft which were subjected to Before Flight, Turn round and After Flight Inspections. The incident is reported to have come to light when a pilot carried out a routine inspection of the nose wheel bay.
My question is, how was the body not discovered prior to this particular inspection?
What exactly does the Inspection schedule call for in this area?

The body was found in the right hand wing gear at the front, forward of the wheels.
I was a bit slow carrying out a walkround once. My QFI leaned out of the cockpit and announced: "For goodness sake hurry up - you're flying it, not buying it!" :}

overstress
 

The body was found in the right hand wing gear at the front, forward of the wheels.

OK it was not the Nose Wheel Bay but does that make it less serious? My question was what inspections if any should be carried out in this area between flights?

Just a thought, how about placing a couple of mirrors inside the well
that can be viewed from the ground for easy inspection.. .

M

Although MReyn has a point, the context of my post was directed more at the ramblings of Orographic - (Sorry Oro!) - it was just a bit too far off the beaten track to get your original point across.

vsb

Less serious? No. But a damn site harder to see from the ground. See my earlier post to answer your second point.
Good idea except someone would then be tasked with cleaning the mirrors regularly (Remember the 737 direct view mirrors for the landing gear downlocks? They got cleaned every night didn't they?:rolleyes: ). Easier just to open the doors and do a full visual inspection during the Transit Check.:ok:

VSB, its ok ,and yes it did wander a little off topic, but i do feel trying to nut out how to stop it happening again, is a useful expenditure of energy. After all, who wants a body on their conscious, regardless or not if you could have done anything to prevent the poor sod from expiring. There is a reasion why train drivers, for example, get free counceling after an incident in their line of work.

maybe the topic should fork at this point, into two threads, one for the event, and one looking for solutions to impliment?

Has any one records of number of fatalities/stowaways over recent years?

I have no sympathy for those who die in wheel wells.

Whenever we return from India or Africa, I always think about stowaways when we're flying an approach to one of LHR's westerly runways. I hope and pray I'm not about to drop a frozen body onto the innocent people of London as I move the gear lever to the down position.

If they're prepared to die trying to seek a better life then that's their choice, unfortunately plenty of desperates die in boats, cargo containers, trains etc. every year. My concern with airline stowaways is the risk their actions have on the people who live beneath the approach paths to international airports.

I'm also amazed at the pathetic torches some of my colleagues use when they do a walk-around. As a result, it's not surprising bodies go undetected for a few flights.

This aircraft flew CPT – LHR- SIN –LHR – HKG – LHR –LAX with the poor mans body inside the landing gear all the time.

Is it really possible no British Airways Ground Engineer, Pilot, or other properly qualified person, checked an area of an aircraft that can be climbed into and where something could easily be left?

Surely this should be done on a daily basis before each and every flight as happens with certain other airlines? If not this is shocking. The security implications are appalling.

If you'd bothered to read the three pages of this thread drflight instead of just posting you'd have found the answers to the questions you didn't need to ask.:ugh:

Sigh! :rolleyes: Just as we had uneducated pontification about the BA B744 LAX-LHR/MAN engine out flight from numerous people who had absolutely no understanding or knowledge of the B744 and its systems, we now have another bunch of either pilots with no B744 experience or else a bunch of wannabe tranees, PPL's or plain vanilla enthusiasts and spotters giving us the benefit [sic] of their thoughts and experience ( :rolleyes: ) about what can and can't be seen from the ground during a walk around of a B744.

Either you've got the B744 on your licence (pilot or engineer) and have performed walk arounds on it or else you haven't. If you haven't, then please could you limit your posts to questions about what can and can't be easily seen in the landing gear bays from the ground on a walk around of a B744, otherwise you risk raising the blood pressure of those of us that do, un-necessarily, with all that pompous pontification that just tells us (B744 experienced pilots and engineers) that you have no real idea what it is really like checking out the underside of a real B744 in the first place. :ugh:

So well said! I was a pilot on 747-400 for 8 years, and the Classic for 10 years before that. It is extremely difficult to spot people on the walkaround. After the walkaround, there is an extensive period of 30 minutes or more when access can be gained, and again during taxi, this is when a lot of stowaways make a break for it in the dark and climb aboard- times when they cannot be stopped. If these economic migrants are going to insist on doing this darn fool thing, it's impossible, apart from local security being beefed up, to stop them. They are not at the end of their tether to do this- they want a taste of the bright lights and wealth. No pilot should have any conscience about these idiots killing themselves like this.

Perhaps an SIA or EL AL pilot might care to explain how their checks would have prevented this!

drflight,
I have in the past performed ad hoc turnround/transit checks on El Al aircraft and the required inspections were no different to my own airline, i.e. no opening of gear bay doors and looking inside. I have also witnessed El Al pilots carrying out a walkround inspection of their own, as they are required to do and at no time did they attempt to look in the gear bays or ask me to do likewise. I take your point that theres a security implication here but rather than berating pilots and engineers for not carrying out the required checks correctly, pressure should be applied to airport operators to make their boundaries more secure. Then these individuals who are ignorant of the dangers might not get as far as the wheel wells.

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

Stoic,

My point exactly. Thank you.

Well said, Stoic.

Stoic, excellent point and well said, as an ex certifying staff on the B747 I have read about wheel well inspections as you know to do a 100% inspection of all wheel wells during a turnround is virtually impossible the answer lies with the airport authorities and security services to provide the required measures, however we all know that this is also impossible due to highly motivated young men trying to stow away it seems that this is a problem that will continue in the near future.

Given the decision-making process of the authorities, we have to wait until explosives are planted in a WW:mad:

The authorities will then act to close this particular barn door:(

Forgive me, I have no experience in this field at all.
Wondering I am, there's a lot of talk here on how to avoid letting the stowaways into wheel wells and how to check if they're there...

Is it worth looking more carefully at airport security? Surley this is a far cheaper and easier method to implement?

There was a mention of two stowaways who hid in long grass and managed to get past the security escorting the aircraft to the hold-short. If the grass were cut, would they have been less likley to reach the aircraft as they'd have been spotted earlier?

Relating to the security issue, if people can get onto the airfield and into aircraft, what's stopping them getting near enough to fire a shoulder mounted rocket towards a smaller aircraft?

A small tear-gas canister injected into the wheel well might discourage people from climbing in, if that was the atmosphere inside. Obviously it relies on the fact that most of it stays in there until the doors open for the gear to be raised, otherwise the ground crew wouldn't be able to do their job. At the very least, if you assume that the stowaway is effectively dead when he climbs in, he probably wouldn't be able to hold on as the doors open and would be left near the departure point rather than potentially being dropped on approach to the destination.

Tear Gas ?!
 

I believe the stuff can be corrosive. It also becomes a workplace hazard as residues have to be removed before maintenance can approach the WW.

And what happens if any TG happens to get loose in the cabin?

It doesn't have to be tear gas, I was merely exploring proof of concept :}

In theory, if there's a way that the wheel well environment can be made unpleasant before take-off, it might help discourage successful stowaway attempts.

We're getting a lot of daft and dangerous ideas tossed in here about this. any inflatable doogeridoo filling the wheel well is going to get punctured or inflate at the wrong time one day and hazard the passengers. Tear gas will hurt someone it shouldn't one day. Raising and lowering the doors every turnaround will achieve nothing- they will run up as the aeroplane taxis away for takeoff. The only answer is security. There is no stopping them otherwise. So is there anybody else who thinks they can think of a solution in 3 minutes and wants to waste everybodies time that the industry and many aeroplane designers haven't been able to come up with so far? Ray guns.....microwave beams to heat up human bodies......?

Re Post 75
 

My visits to Gear Bays are few, the reasons for Avionic expertise there being limited, however I feel there is no need to MAKE them unpleasent, They ARE unpleasent, generally, Hydraulic fluid residue, Dirt, Anti-corrosion coatings, Brake Dust, Rubber, the list just goes on. Most on here have the answer - Security.

I honestly cannot believe that there are some people on this thread who would call the man an "idiot" I feel extremely sorry for this man and all the others who try to escape in such a desperate fashion. And just to add i am not a pilot (want to be though!) but i think that is irrelevant anyway. It is much more of a moral issue than anything else.

I think getting the desired result by improved security is going to take a long time, given that some airports are in areas where corruption is common and others are in areas which are hard to secure. As such, you have to assume that a potential stowaway will gain access to an aircraft, so exploring means of denying him entry to the wheel wells is a perfectly valid option.

As for being daft and dangerous, many good ideas are triggered by something that is in itself obviously not a good idea but that set someone else thinking. That's why we have brainstorming sessions when creating new concepts, daft and impractical ideas often lead to a workable solution. The initial idea may take three minutes, turning it into a workable solution that achieves an acceptable increase in weight, doesn't compromise safety, isn't too expensive and has a low failure rate, may take months or years. Understanding why an idea is daft is progress towards a solution.

How about a Gurkha armed with a knife and a parachute in each wheel well - he can defend it against incursion and when the doors open for gear retraction he can jump out and hope his parachute opens in time. Then he can catch a taxi (or walk) back to the airport and repeat the process.

Very well said indeed. It's the very nature of engineering.