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Stowaway found dead in Arik Air in Johannesburg
*Airline to begin investigation
The lifeless body of a stowaway was yesterday found in the main wheel well of one of Arik Air’s A330-200 aircraft at the Oliver Tambo International Airport, Johannesburg.
Spokesman for Arik Air, Banji Ola, in a statement said the aircraft operated the scheduled Lagos-Johannesburg flight that departed the Murtala Muhammed International Airport at 3:55pm on Tuesday, November 29, 2016 and arrived Johannesburg shortly before 11pm.
He disclosed that engineers of South African Airways Technical facility at the Oliver Tambo International Airport where the aircraft was scheduled for a routine maintenance check discovered the body of the stowaway during inspection phase.
He said investigations were ongoing to determine how the stowaway found his way into the aircraft’s main wheel well.
It has been a long time that the country has witnessed a stowaway incident which then became a big security issue in the aviation sector.
It would be recalled that August 2013, a teenage boy, Daniel Ihekina, who hid in the tyre hole of Arik Air flying from Benin to Lagos was discovered as the plane touched down in Lagos.
The teenage stowaway was arrested at the Lagos airport and handed to the State Security Service (SSS). He thought he was on a US bound flight.
A stowaway is a person who secretly boards a vehicle, such as an aircraft, bus, ship, cargo truck or train to travel without paying and being detected.
Experts have said that the teenager survived because the altitude of the flight did not go beyond 10,000 and 15,000 feet.
It would be recalled that the remains of a young Nigerian man was discovered in October 2012 in the undercarriage compartment of an Arik Air Airbus A340-500, after it returned from a flight to New York, United States.
The deceased was said to have hid himself in the wheel well 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 (MMIA), Lagos.
According to experts, while the undercarriage compartment of the Airbus A340-500 is big enough to accommodate a person, besides the space for the landing gears, the chances of anyone, who hides there coming out alive is slim due to lack of oxygen, most especially if it is a long haul flight.
Stowaway is a serious security breach in the global aviation industry including the United States of America, United Kingdom and other developed aviation industries where security of aircrafts and users of airports are taken with the seriousness it deserves.
Although most get to their preferred destinations, unfortunately, they don’t get there alive. They are mostly found cold dead on arrival.
For instance, in June 2013 in the US, a Nigerian-American man pleaded guilty to stowing away on a commercial airline flight from New York to Los Angeles in an incident that revealed an apparent lapse in airport security.
In November 2012 in Nigeria, a deceased stowaway got on the undercarriage of one of the aircraft of Arik Air to New York from the Murtala Mohammed International Airport (MMIA), Lagos with the alleged aid of some security personnel and ground handling companies at the airport.
The unidentified stowaway was discovered when the airline returned to Nigeria from New York by its personnel on routine checks in Lagos. Local medicine and a Bible were found on him.
Also, in March 2010, there was discovery of the corpse of a Nigerian identified as Okechukwu Okeke in the nose wheel compartment of a plane operated by the United States carrier, Delta Airline, at the Lagos Airport.
