Untitled Post #8
As I write this, I’m enviously watching the lady sitting in front of me eat her delicious McDonald’s fries while I’m stuck with a lame tomato and mozzarella sandwich on bread that may well be the worst bread I’ve ever had in my life. I hate ciabatta, focaccia, artisan bread - all of that stuff. This bread fits into one or more of those categories. The lady eating fries just looked back at me. Braggart. I’m in Chicago right now at the airport. On the way in, I saw lots of snow, leafless trees and a handful of red neon signs (and 2 green ones) dotting the winter landscape. It’s 0 degrees here. I wonder what Joe Kirkland’s family is doing right now. Had I been blogging about 30 minutes ago, this post would have been much better, as I was still on the plane, having just awoken from a dream in which Dan was wearing high heels (the same ones I have on). Now, after eating an unsatisfying sandwich, I’ve become super aware of the fact that the socks I’m wearing, made for people with diabetes (I don’t have diabetes) and bought at CVS, are way too tight and are hurting my legs. The reason I wore them today, actually, is because a sticker on the socks advertised them as being great for wearing on planes. Good news – there are a lot of Polish people around. This whole day got me thinking. Thinking about stowaways in wheel wells of airplanes.
- The way a stowaway usually gains entrance into a plane’s wheel well is he hides, then runs out to the plane, undetected, as it’s stationary before takeoff, maneuvers himself up the landing gear and into a recessed area and, providing he doesn’t fall off as the plane departs, stays there as the wheels and such retract into the plane.
- Since 1947 (as of 2007), there have been 74 known stowaway attempts aboard aircraft. Of that lot, only 14 survived.
- It seems that most stowaways do so to gain freedom from oppression or other such undesirable circumstances or, according to wikipedia, to get from one place to another without having to pay, which seems a little extreme. Even more extreme than that are those who do it just for a thrill.
- According to a study I link to below, 2 common planes to stow away on are the Boeing 707 and the Douglas DC-8.
- They also report the highest cruising altitude at which a stowaway has been to be 39,000 ft.
- All the subjects cited in the report are male (2 are unknown).
- The most common causes of death seem to be hypothermia and falling. Imagine stowing away with another person who doesn’t make it, while you do?!
- One of the flights was from San Diego to New York!
- One of the first things a stowaway experiences is hypoxia, or lack of adequate oxygen supply. Keep in mind that the wheel well is an unpressurized atmosphere.
- Accompanying the onset of hypoxia is heat that emanates from the friction the wheels had just experienced during takeoff.
- I’m not going to do the conversion because I don’t know it offhand, but temperatures that accompany the standard cruising altitudes range from -43 to -63 degrees Celsius. (If you figure 0 degrees Celsius is freezing, that should give you some sort of idea).
- As altitude increases, pressure decreases and at cruising altitudes, it is below that required to maintain brain consciousness. It is guaranteed that all stowaways, at cruising altitude, are unconscious.
- Nitrogen gas embolism and decompression sickness (DCS) also plague stowaways.
- As the plane descends, the well returns to a more normal pressure and the temperature increases. If his heart hasn’t failed, he hasn’t frozen to death, his brain hasn’t been severely damaged or a few other things, the stowaway will regain consciousness during or after landing.
With all of that to consider, it’s amazing that there is a survival rate at all among stowaways. Think about it - you may still not be fully conscious as the plane lands - if you move the wrong way, you can easily fall out.
Some specific cases:
- In July of 1999, 2 stowaways, traveling from Conakry, Guinea to Brussels, Belgium, froze to death. They were boys and “were carrying a letter, written in imperfect French” which was widely published.
- In June of 2005, the remains of a stowaway were found on a plane that landed in JFK from Johannesburg via Senegal.
- In January of 2007, a 17-year-old boy’s remains were found on a plane in Los Angeles, but he’d actually been a stowaway on the previous flight, to Cape Town. They just hadn’t found his body there.
- In July of 2007, a man’s body was found in the wheel well of a plane in San Francisco that had arrived from China.
This study has much more information on the matter.
