69. Flight Beyond All Hope. Part 1. Dude's Originals.

Dude, Please Don't Try It.

From: henryblogwalker

Dear Carlos,

Dude, I’m writing this to ask you not to do what you are about to do. Maybe we‘ve never met. Maybe we are just Facebook friends. Yeah, I got to know you through the first comment you made to one of my posts in my blog HeyDude.  What was that post? Yeah, “Forgive Me Dude, If You Can”. Actually, I had to delete your comment. Something I never do. That’s how it all started.
Still, I am your buddy. Please listen to me. DON’T DO IT. What you are trying to do is stupid.

Carlos checked his gear for the last time with his checklist. The thermos, the harness he rigged up with the old car seat belt, ear plugs, winter gloves,…

I once read in an old Reader’s Digest, under ‘Drama In real Life,’ about a boy who hid in the landing gear bay of a jet, with a friend and tried to fly out of the country. Was his name Miguel? I remember it had some Spanish ring to it, like yours.  The landing gear bay or the undercarriage compartment or wheel well or whatever you call it is neither heated nor pressurized. To make the matters worse, there is no oxygen supply. How they survived, beats me!

Another jet roared overhead climbing steeply into the gathering dusk and banking left. That is the Lufthansa flight to Munich. Carlos knew the flight schedule by heart, now.  He has been careful. Not only had he memorized flight schedules, he had studied the target area thoroughly for the past six months.

Then he heard the crunch of gravel under heavy military boots, as he was expecting.  The two guards with the AK47s were passing the spot he was hiding patrolling the airport perimeter. He lay flat on his belly, behind the bush.

I checked this on the internet because you said your mind was set on this weird idea of getting into the US as a wheel bay stowaway. What I found was amazing. This daredevil stunt is performed every now and then by various people, under the popular cover names, like, asylum seekers, refugees and fortune hunters in the west. The FAA counted 13 wheel well arrivals in the United States in year 2000 and three survives. The next year none of the six attempted the feat survived it.

Another departing Boeing 777 thundered down the runway with the powerful Rolls Royce engines roaring and whistling at the same time.  The jet lifted into the air emitting blue flames in the exhaust of the giant engines. Carlos watched with mixed feelings as the landing gear beginning to fold up into the wheel bay immediately after the aircraft was airborne.  The compartment door closed over them smoothly. Carlos felt butterflies in his stomach.


Dude, like I said, when I checked on the net, the records went all the way back to 1947. Since then, 96 people have tried hiding in the wheel wells of 85 flights and 73 of them didn’t make it. Only 23 survived the ordeal. And, the youngest was only nine years old.  Just one person survived the cruising altitude of 39,000ft. The survival rate of a wheel well passenger is merely 20.3, dude. This may not be accurate as the ones who could have fallen off the aircraft into water or remote areas and were not even recovered, could be not included in the survey.

Carlos peeped for any sign of the security guard and seeing that the coast was clear, sprinted along the hedge towards the end of the runway. He was careful to dart from bush to bush. His heavily padded winter boots with thick rubber soles made no noise on the grass.

The higher the altitude and longer the flight time, fewer the odds of survival in a unpressurized unheated wheel well of an aircraft.


As the temperature could drop as low as -45˚C, most of the stowaways who are not equipped for this, could get frozen to death.

On top of that, they suffer from asphyxiation as higher the altitudes the oxygen level is too low to survive and low pressure makes it difficult for the lungs to work normally.

Due to oxygen deprivation and freezing temperatures, the wheel well passengers are most likely to blackout. And, on arrival in preparation for landing, when the wheels bay covers open and landing gear is  deployed approximately at 1500 feet,  the unconscious passengers face the danger of tumbling off the wheel well and plunging towards the earth, to their inevitable death. Those who were lucky enough to be conscious at that crucial moment and managed to hold onto something inside the wheel bay with their frostbitten hands, had a chance of survival.

Do I sound like a teacher?

Carlos was out of breath when he finally arrived at the vantage point. He selected a leafy bush, crouched behind it, and slid his backpack off his shoulders. He was already sweating in the two jeans he was wearing one over the other and the two long sleeved sweatshirts. He decided to wear the thick leather jacket and the jeans at the last possible moment with the woolen padded leather gloves. Henryblogwalker’s email gave him that idea. And, the safety belt made out of the old car seat belt, he salvaged from the scrap yard should be worn over the jacket.


It’s not easy for a prospective wheel bay stowaway to slip through the airfield perimeter fence with all that tight security and get near aircraft unnoticed. But the airport security and specially the airside area movement control is not the same everywhere. So they get into position and wait to make a run for it immediately before the takeoff. I don’t know about yours, Carlos. Still, it is a mad scheme to try.

Carlos glanced at his cheap digital wristwatch. It should be here now. He watched the activity at the distant airport with his eyes narrowed a little to filter the glare from the airport terminal buildings and airport vehicles.  Is that the tow tractor pushing his airplane out of the ramp?  He strained his eyes to make sure that the plane actually started to taxi towards the runway under its own power.

It’s no wonder so many of them pay the air fare of traveling in the unheated, unpressurized, landing gear compartment with no oxygen supply,  with their lives.

The Boeing 777 taxied slowly towards the end of the runway where he was hiding. He opened the backpack and took the articles out. First he slipped on the leather jeans over the two denim jeans he was already wearing and zipped up the fly with some difficulty before he put on heavily padded leather jacket.  Then he put on the leather winter gloves. Finally, he passed the seat belt harness around his waist and snapped on the buckle. By the time he finished he was sweating. He  picked up the orange colored soft rubber ear plugs and rolled them  into thin wicks before inserting them deep into his ears.

The rumble of the Boeing 777’s powerful engines changed the note as it slowed up. It came to a halt at the holding position, only few meters away from where Carlos was hiding, waiting for the clearance from the control tower. It was now or never.

The stowaways usually hide nearby the end of the runway where the aircraft would taxi to, make a 180 degree turn and wait or the clearance from the control tower for takeoff. Or depending on the layout of the airport, wait in a storm drain near the holding position at the end of the taxiway   where  the aircraft would sit waiting for the clearance to takeoff before entering the runway. The stowaway would run and mount the landing gear and haul himself into the wheel compartment.

Carlos looked around. The coast was clear. As he was behind the tail of the aircraft, he could not see the heads of the pilots through the cockpit windows. He could not see any faces peeping at him through any one of the fuselage portholes. If I can’t see you, you can’t see me. It’s as simple as that. Something his dad had taught him. He sprang to his feet and raced towards the giant undercarriage. 

Part 2 is NOW just a CLICK  away. 

70. Flight Beyond All Hope. Part 2. Dude's Originals.

P.S:

This is the blog post I took the longest to compose. If you just check the last countdown post I published as a prologue to this, you would understand what I mean. It was published on February 28th.  I started writing this even before that. Obviously, it took so much research as I wanted to be as accurate with facts as possible.

I also would like to thank my children  Hirusha and Hiruni, my wife Deepa and the fellow bloggers Senna and Chams who kept reminding me of this post ever since the countdown post was published.

References:

• http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-32111/Cuban-stowaways-died-jet-soared.html#ixzz2J5vFW3af


• http://en.wikipedia.org


• http://www.boeing.com/boeing/commercial/777family/pf/pf_200product.page


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


• http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2003/12/do_jet_stowaways_ever_survive.html


• http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2003/12/do_jet_stowaways_ever_survive.html

Revised.