Boy Who Hid in Plane’s Wheel Well Beat Long Odds in Surviving 5 ½-Hour Flight

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/22/us/boy-who-hid-in-planes-wheel-well-beat-long-odds-in-surviving-5-hour-flight.html?hp&_r=0

by danso • 12 years ago

28 44 12 years ago

nytimes.com

ColinWright2• 12 years ago

Not all identical, some simply related, all from the last 24 hours:

    You Can Survive A Flight In A Jet's Wheel Well,
    But Probably Won't (npr.org)

-- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7623300

    Experts stunned by local boy's Hawaii flight in
    wheel well (sfgate.com)

-- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7622257

    Teen Survives Flight To Hawaii In Jet's Wheel Well,
    FBI Says (npr.org)

-- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7622231 (discussion)

    Teen OK after riding in wheel well of Hawaii jet
    (boston.com)

-- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7621054

    Survival at High Altitude: Wheel-Well Passengers
    (faa.gov)

-- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7620736 (a few comments)

danso• 12 years ago

Boh! I saw the FAA discussion but the document was undated and I thought it was upvoted out of it pure interest...I hadn't seen this story until I woke up but didn't really watch the news yesterday.

ColinWright2• 12 years ago

Obviously something that's caught a lot of interest - plus it's useful to have links to different versions and different (but related) stories.

hazz• 12 years ago

I don't see how this couldn't be prevented by having ground crew take a quick look inside the wheel wells before the plane taxis to the runway. Is it too elevated to see in easily?

nwh2• 12 years ago

Do you check the wheel wells of your car before you drive? The chance of something being wrong there is so slight that the convenient option is taken.

anthony_franco• 12 years ago

True. But I also don't ask passengers to pass through a metal detector before boarding my car.

srl• 12 years ago

Apparently this is something done in regions considered to have high stowaway risk. (Don't remember the source - it was mentioned in one of the news outlets covering this.) However, this isn't done in most airports, since it's not really seen as being worth the effort. In particular, it's simply not supposed to be possible for somebody to sneak onto the tarmac unnoticed.

mehwoot• 12 years ago

I'm amazed anybody could survive 5 hours at those altitudes- the lack of oxygen in the air means someone who hasn't acclimatized to altitude would pass out in minutes.

nwh2• 12 years ago

The articles mention he was unconscious, so this checks out.

danielweber• 12 years ago

It seems the cold reduced his need for oxygen.

Don't try this at home.

mnw21cam• 12 years ago

Make that seconds. At 38,000 feet, time of useful consciousness would be something like 25 seconds. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_of_useful_consciousness

However, it does take a bit longer than that to climb to that altitude.

aestra3• 12 years ago

The article mentions it was cold. Does the Mammalian diving reflex kick in in cold even if there is no water?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammalian_diving_reflex

chrismcb• 12 years ago

An interesting article from FAA describes what may have happened: http://www.faa.gov/data_research/research/med_humanfacs/aero...

nmridul• 12 years ago

If it is this easy to climb under a plane, I wonder why they waste every one's time with those "serious" security checks.

halviti• 12 years ago

Security theater. Providing an illusion of security while acclimatizing the public to encroachments on their personal freedoms.

I'm more angry that hundreds of millions, or even billions of dollars are spent to train a workforce to identify tubes of toothpaste on a screen, but anyone at an airport that wants a knife can just order a steak from an airport restaurant.

It makes me sad that the public can tolerate such ignorance and waste.

mdmarra• 12 years ago

Airport restaurants only use plastic cutlery when they are located past the security checkpoint.

Edit: US airports. Since this article was about a US airline operating in the United States I thought that went without saying.

aestra3• 12 years ago

Plus you can build some weapons from items purchased after the security check.

http://www.wired.com/2013/12/terminal-cornucopia/

josefresco• 12 years ago

A nut with a small explosive (tube of toothpaste) it not the same threat level as some nut with a knife. An explosive just needs to be detonated once to potentially take down the entire plane. A nut with a knife needs to stab his way through the entire plane which despite being one of the "weapons" used on 911 wouldn't happen again with passenger's heightened awareness.

belorn• 12 years ago

In the days after 9/11, government sent military to the airports to reassure the safety of air travel. However, having loaded guns around that much people would be extremely problematic so they removed any ammunition from the guns. So there they were, standing around with guns that had no ammunition in them, and people felt safe.

The goal of airport security is to make you feel safe by knowing other people have to go through the same ordeal (ie, security theater). It is more akin to hazing rituals than actually security.

carrotleads2• 12 years ago

Are we sure he travelled on the wheel?

Lets say this person was found loitering in the area and someone asked him how he got there and he told he hid in the plane's wheel's.

Most people would term that as a impossibility and decide he got there some other way.

if he was found unconscious on the plane's wheel, then isn't it a "black swan" like event that breaks down most of our existing assumptions on the subject of human endurance.

edit : still have not read news other than headlines and trying to make a point about perceptions/assumptions.

droithomme• 12 years ago

It's not really a black swan. The mortality rate from wheel well stowaways is 76%. There have been 105 documented cases, and 80 of them died.

Often they fall out of the wheel well when the landing gear deploy and are found some distance from the airport.

Most people easily survive with only 20% of the oxygen level found at sea level, but quickly become unconscious and enter a sort of hibernation state. Then they may slowly succumb to cold, or simply are not awake and able to respond sensibly when landing gear deploys, or die from complications from high altitude pulmonary edema or high altitude cerebral edema.

The media angle appearing in some articles that this is some astonishing thing that has never been seen before and for which there is no scientific explanation is just the standard media hysteria tactic used to collect eyeballs and views by making exaggerated claims.

mrfusion3• 12 years ago

Do you have any references for those claims? I thought I read there was less oxygen than that?

It also seems like at those temperatures most people would sucumb to hypothermia, no?

carrotleads2• 12 years ago

What is the limit of human endurance.

If earlier it was assumed that -40 c would kill in 5 mins and now we have proof that someone has travelled at -62 c for 5+ hrs and with minimal oxygen.

Isn't that a black swan like event.

Obviously we can't test for these things but we can find limits through such incidences.

PS : whats with the downvotes. Do some folks want everyone to parrot the same line?

gadders• 12 years ago

From the BBC, a story about the people that sadly don't survive similar journeys and land somewhere in London on the approach to Heathrow:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19562101

mseebach• 12 years ago

It makes me happy that exactly not a word of this article is about panicking over the fact that he could have been carrying a bomb. Are we (the population at large) finally calming down enough about flight security that we can have a rational discussion about what makes sense?

That said, airport perimeter security is pretty high on the list of things it does make pretty good sense to care about. After all, he could have been carrying a bomb :)

uptown• 12 years ago

The true lapse that this incident demonstrates is that security cameras were installed to provide a multiplier for one's ability to monitor an area, with the added bonus of being able to record what's monitored. Instead of having 100 workers walk the perimeter, strategically placed camera can multiply the effectiveness of a significantly smaller staff while securing the same area. But what's happened is that in many instances, cameras are being used as passive monitors. They're intended to either serve as deterrents or to collect footage that can be reviewed at a later date if-necessary ... disregarding the effectiveness multiplier they provided, and instead reducing the overall effectiveness of a facility's security.

I wonder whether technologies like Oculus might change the effectiveness of security cameras. A single man could theoretically "be" in multiple places at one time from a security perspective. And the sense of actually being on-location, as opposed to having something on a screen that can be ignored or missed, might return that multiplier to monitoring a location using a network of video cameras streamed to somebody's headset.

D-Train2• 12 years ago

Yeah, CNN posted this morning about how the airport cameras at San Jose actually did capture/ record the boy jumping the fence and walking on the tarmac to the plane. Cameras are one thing, but having watchful eyes are another.

Implementation of more automated surveillance to help SUPPLEMENT (not replace) existing security guards watching monitors is ideal. It'll be interesting as security ramps up to include things like facial/ body recognition.

CNN article: http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/22/travel/plane-stowaway-security...

D-Train2• 12 years ago

Oh, and as a quick follow-up because I forgot to mention... the article notes how some countries/ airports are signaled as "high stowaway" risk. Captains may look in the wheel wells for a person, but that's not really enough.

If someone were to just hop the plane and plant a bomb and conceal it, it could be easily overlooked by any observer.

robbiep• 12 years ago

It's pretty laughable that with all the ridiculous extent to which certain organisations go to try and make flying 'safe from terrorism' no-one has been worried about some people sneaking through the high security fence surrounding the airport and planting their nefarious tools on board.

I guess at the end of the day it is more the perception of safety than actual safety we are getting

doyoulikeworms• 12 years ago

A useful term that I recently learned to describe this is "security theater" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_theater).

And that is exactly what I think that the TSA et al. provide.

misiti3780• 12 years ago

that is what taleb would call the black swan event. airport security artificially makes is feel safer (the turkey problem)

mrfusion3• 12 years ago

I'm thinking this is a hoax. I'd like to see any kind of evidence that he was actually in the wheel well.

If it's not a hoax, it's seems like it would be more of a medical miracle than people are realizing? There's way less oxygen at that altitude than at the top of mt everest, plus I've read it got as cold as -65F.

Edit: Tried to explain better. :-(

mrfusion3• 12 years ago

Can anyone explain how this isn't a medical miracle, instead of just downvoting?

epi8• 12 years ago

Read any of these. Especially the first one.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7626878

aestra3• 12 years ago

Well the article mentions there is a 76% death rate for these known stowaways so it isn't like he's the only one who survived.

My extremely uninformed hypothesis is the mammalian diving reflex kicks in since the article mentioned it was cold?????

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammalian_diving_reflex

KMag• 12 years ago

I suppose it depends on the p-value threshold you assign to "miracle" status. Where did you estimate his probability of survival? As stated elsewhere, 25 out of 105 people known to have tried something like this are known to have survived.

The wheel well isn't out in the slipstream and probably stays significantly warmer than the ambient temperature, both from having a human in there to heat it and having warm aircraft components nearby. After takeoff, the tires will be hot from hysteresis losses, and the hydraulic fluid will be hot. I'm not sure what other equipment is up in the wheel well for easy maintenance access, but I wouldn't be surprised if the wheel well had several pieces of equipment providing heat throughout the flight. There's also plain heat conduction from the aircraft cabin into the wheel well. The cold also helps survival in hypoxic conditions. Clearly it's not a good idea, but it has been survived many times before.

Edit: http://cdn-www.airliners.net/aviation-photos/photos/1/8/8/17... shows a lot of the equipment in the wheel well, which would have helped keep the well warmer than ambient temperatures.

reubensutton• 12 years ago

Unless I have misunderstood something, that article says the mortality rate is 76% for people who do this, making it only a 4-1 chance of success, which isn't long odds at all?

jonathansizz• 12 years ago

FYI: that would be a 3-1 chance against, i.e. 3 failures for each success (expressed odds are a ratio, not a fraction).

fr0sty• 12 years ago

An unknown number of attempt end with the stowaway falling out of the wheel well after takeoff and before touchdown.

agalaria• 12 years ago

This is shocking. Hight time that the airport security starts checking wheel well too or put a camera for Pilot to check before the take off.

Boy Who Hid in Plane’s Wheel Well Beat Long Odds in Surviving 5 ½-Hour Flight

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