Romanian Survives Austria-UK Flight in Private Jet Landing Gear
On Sunday night, a 20-year-old Romanian said that he crawled under the fence surrounding the perimeter of the Vienna airport to climb into the landing gear compartment of a private Boeing 747 belonging to a high-ranking UAE sheik. Surprisingly, the man was able to survive the 97-minute flight to Heathrow airport.
A Metropolitan police spokesman reported that the man was arrested and warned for the offense of being a stowaway, as well as questioned about crossing the UK border without a passport. The man was also checked by paramedics after being arrested, but he didn’t have any injuries. It’s believed that, along with a lack of oxygen, the man withstood temperatures around -41ºC. He was later released.
A Civil Aviation Authority spokesman said that the man was very lucky he survived. It’s not unheard of for people to try to escape a country by crawling into the landing gear. They don’t usually arrive to the destination alive due to the low temperatures and lack of oxygen, he continued. If they do survive that, he added, they usually fall out when the landing gear opens because they are unconscious. It’s possible that the man survived the low temperatures because the flight was traveling lower than usual due to bad weather, according to reports.
The most ironic thing about this whole story, though, is that the Romanian could have gotten into the UK legally, since he is a citizen of a European Union nation. He simply climbed in the first plane that he found without knowing where it was going in hopes to find work in another country after failing to do so in Austria.
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