The dead body of a young Nigerian man was discovered yesterday Friday
October 26th in the wheel well, the undercarriage compartment of an Arik
Air aircraft, after it returned from a flight to New York, United
States.
Apparently, The deceased hid himself in the wheel Compartment
for days and was crushed to death while the flight was airborne to the
JF Kennedy Airport, New York, from the Murtala Muhammed International
Airport, Lagos.
An official who spoke to Journalist said the dead
body was found during a check on the aircraft panel as it was being
prepared for another flight and that the undercarriage compartment of
the Airbus A340-500 is big enough to accommodate a person, besides the
space for the tyres.
"He probably might have hidden himself there
some days and died while the aircraft was on its way to New York. We
found him when we were doing checks on the panel; the aircraft probably
came back with him dead," the official said.
The source said that
it is out of ignorance that people hide in the wheel well and plan to
stowaway because "the compartment is not pressurised like the cabin of
an aircraft and it is not heated, so survival is rare even if the person
is not crushed by the wheels."
Pilots and aeronautical engineers
familiar with the wheel well compartment said it is roomy enough to
contain a human being, but it is highly unlikely that any one who hid
there would come out alive after a flight that took several hours due to
lack of oxygen.
The official attributed the incident to porous
security at the airport, noting that "if having access to the airside is
stringently prohibited, anybody that is not an official of airlines,
handling companies and Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria would not
gain access to the tarmac."
Another source said: "The security at
the airport is very bad and that explains why somebody can gain access
to the airside and inside the aircraft and no one will know.
Security
around the cargo area is even worse and from there anybody can take
anything into the tarmac. Now, it is a human being that is smuggled in;
one day a dangerous object will be smuggled in."
investigations revealed that stowaways connive with ground handling companies to access the airside and the wheel well.
"The
handling company workers and the security operatives indulge in a lot
of illicit activities at the airport and over the years there have been
efforts to put a check on such excesses but every effort has so far
failed," said another source.
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