By Jack Nicas and Susan Carey
A 16-year-old California boy emerged virtually unharmed after
spending a flight to Hawaii hidden in an airplane wheel well,
authorities said, in an extraordinary case of survival for a
usually fatal type of stowaway.
The boy ran away from his Santa Clara, Calif., home on Sunday,
scaled the fence at San Jose International Airport and climbed into
the landing-gear compartment of a Hawaiian Airlines Boeing 767-300
that departed for Maui just after 8 a.m. local time, said Federal
Bureau of Investigation Special Agent Tom Simon.
The plane reached 38,000 feet during flight over the Pacific
Ocean, which lasted five hours and 15 minutes, according to
flight-tracking website FlightAware.com. The standard temperature
at 38,000 feet is minus 78 degrees Fahrenheit, according to a
Federal Aviation Administration report.
Mr. Simon said at least one person witnessed the boy climb down
from the aircraft wheel well about an hour after the plane landed
at Kahului Airport. Authorities interviewed the boy, who said he
had lost consciousness shortly after takeoff. The FBI checked
surveillance footage in San Jose, which showed the boy scaling the
airport fence Sunday morning.
Mr. Simon said the boy had no injuries. "He did not look like he
had been to hell and back," he said. "He was disoriented and
hungry."
Attempts to stow away on commercial jets generally originate in
the developing world, and usually result in death because of
extreme cold and lack of oxygen at high altitudes, as well as the
risk of falling when landing-gear compartments open before
arrival.
The FAA said that 25 of the 105 people who have stowed away on
planes have survived since the first recorded incident in 1929. No
such stowaways originated in the U.S. from 1972 until 2010, when a
16-year-old boy hid in the wheel well of a US Airways flight from
Charlotte, N.C., to Boston. The boy fell from the plane and died as
it lowered its wheels before landing.
That incident, and the latest one, have prompted concern about
security. Rep. Eric Swalwell (D., Calif.), who represents part of
the Bay Area, said he and fellow members of the House Homeland
Security Committee are drafting a request to the Government
Accountability Office to audit airport-perimeter security.
"If a teenager who does not appear to have any nefarious intent
can find himself onto a tarmac and into an airliner, I am concerned
about a more sophisticated plotting individual and what
[terrorists] could do," he said in an interview.
Jeff Price, an aviation-security professor at Metropolitan State
University of Denver, said the industry has long recognized
stowaways as a security threat, however remote, but no terrorist is
known to have attempted to exploit the gap. "It's one of those
weird situations that until it happens, no one's going to do a lot
about it," he said.
Local officials generally are responsible for airport perimeter
security, but federal authorities have scrutinized the issue. The
FAA report said its work with federal security personnel to monitor
and augment airport security is one reason that there were no
stowaways originating from U.S. airports from 1972 to 2010.
The FAA said airport and airfield security isn't its purview.
The Transportation Security Administration said it is investigating
with the airport and FBI. San Jose International Airport officials
didn't respond to a request for comment.
The last time a stowaway is known to have survived such a
journey to a U.S. destination was in 2004, on a flight from the
Dominican Republic to Miami, according to news reports. In 2000, a
man survived an Air France 747 flight from French Polynesia to Los
Angeles, according to Air Safety Week, a trade publication. And in
1999, a Senegalese man survived a flight to France, but died when
he attempted to stow away on another flight later that year,
according to the publication.
A 2011 FAA report said that in addition to hypothermia and
inadequate oxygen, stowaways face risks "such as being crushed in a
confined space when the gears retract, falling when the plane is
landing, or dying from the heat produced by the engines of the
aircraft."
The boy in the Hawaiian Airlines incident is in the custody of
child protective services in Hawaii and doesn't face federal
criminal charges, said Mr. Simon of the FBI. A police spokesman in
San Jose declined to comment if authorities there planned to charge
the boy.
Hawaiian Airlines said in an email on Monday: "Our primary
concern now is for the well-being of the boy, who is exceptionally
lucky to have survived."
Write to Jack Nicas at jack.nicas@wsj.com and Susan Carey at
susan.carey@wsj.com
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