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Teenager who hid in Siberian plane's landing gear survives 50-minute flight and temperatures of -30c
Last updated at 2:34 PM on 2nd November 2010
A teenager survived a 50-minute flight hidden in a plane's landing gear in Siberia, Russian investigators said Tuesday. The 17-year-old stowaway crawled into a space above the wheel of the Soviet-built Antonov An-24 turboprop at a small Siberian town's airfield on Saturday, said a statement issued by the Investigative Committee of the General Prosecutor's Office. Russian television said he survived the 50-minute flight to the regional centre of Irkutsk in just a light coat, despite temperatures of -30c.
The teen hid in the landing gear of a Antonov An-24 turboprop, similar to the one shown here, wearing just a light jacket
Investigators said the stowaway had fled a foster home, and the TV reports said he had robbed a nearby store before climbing inside the plane. He was being treated for frostbite, the reports said. Earlier this year a 20-year-old Romanian man survived a flight from Vienna to London in the landing gear of a Boeing 747.
In 2007, the body of a man was found near the runway of a Moscow airport. Officials said he had fallen when the landing gear was deployed. Just before that incident a young man from the city of Perm in Russia's Ural Mountains flew into Moscow in another plane's landing gear niche. He survived the flight but was hospitalized with severe hypothermia.
