Stowaway's body found in plane landing gear could have been there for days

15 September 2023 , 15:36

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He was found in the landing gear of an Airbus A330 (Image: Newsflash)

A stowaway's body found in the landing gear of a Turkish Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Istanbul may have been there for days, it has emerged.

The man is thought to be African and aged between 30 and 40 years old and was discovered after the aircraft landed in Istanbul, Turkey, on September 14 by horrified maintenance workers. However investigators reviewing security footage have been unable to spot the moment the stowaway got onto the plane.

The plane had recently carried out flights in several African countries before arriving in Turkey. Local media speculates that he could have sneaked on board at any of those airports, meaning he could have been dead for the best part of a week.

The aircraft, an Airbus A330, flew from Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania, and from there to Banjul, the capital of Gambia, on 10th September. It then reportedly flew from Libreville, the capital of Gabon, and Luanda, the capital of Angola, to Istanbul where it returned to European routes. The man's body is undergoing an autopsy. The investigation is ongoing.

Last year, Spain's Maritime Rescue Service said it rescued three stowaways found on a ship's rudder in the Canary Islands after the vessel sailed from Nigeria. The men, found on the Alithini II oil tanker at Las Palmas port, appeared to have symptoms of dehydration and hypothermia and were taken to hospital on the island for medical attention, the Salvamento Maritimo said.

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The agency shared a photo of the three men sitting on the rudder under the ship's massive hull with their feet hanging a few inches from the water. According to the MarineTraffic website, the Malta-flagged vessel left Lagos on November 17 and arrived in Las Palmas on Monday after an 11-day journey. The distance is roughly 2,000 miles.

In 2020 a 14-year-old Nigerian boy was interviewed by Spain's El Pais newspaper after surviving two weeks on a ship's rudder, at the mercy of bad weather and rough seas. He had also departed from Lagos.

"It's not the first time nor will it be the last," tweeted Txema Santana, a journalist and migration adviser to the regional government of the Canary Islands. He added that on previous occasions, the ship owner has usually been responsible for returning the stowaways to their point of departure.

Ryan Fahey