It's raining men, hallelujah, it's raining men, amen.
So goes the famous 1982 hit by The Weather Girls, It's Raining Men.
Yet for a woman in London on the 30th of June of this year, it was literally raining men-
or rather a single man, who fell to his death and landed in the garden of a London suburbanite.
The woman had been calmly sunbathing when suddenly the body of a man landed with a crash
just one meter away.
Upon investigation a bag, some water, and other personal effects were discovered and
it was believed that the man had stowed away in the landing gear of a Kenya Airways flight
inbound to Heathrow Airport.
Astonishingly, this was not the first time that such an incident has occurred, and people
falling to their deaths from the landing gear wells of aircraft is a not-so-uncommon occurrence
throughout history.
On February 22nd, 1970, a 14 year old boy fell to his death just shortly after take
off after attempting to stow away in the landing well of a Douglas DC-8 flying from Sydney
to Tokyo.
An amateur photographer astonishingly happened to capture the event just as it happened and
the boy began his fall
International flights are notoriously expensive- at least those outside of Europe were budget
airlines such as RyanAir let you literally take your life into your own hands for the
cheap cost of an average taxi fare.
Yet despite the dangers, many people routinely attempt to stow away aboard an aircraft, and
while most attempt to gain access to the cargo compartments or even inside the aircraft itself
in lavatories or maintenance areas, more desperate souls routinely attempt to stow away inside
the wheel well of the aircraft.
Of 113 verified attempts to stow away in the wheel well of an aircraft between 1947 and
2015, 86 of these people died, giving would-be stowaways a dismal success rate of 24%.
These incidents are rarely investigated, but it's believed that most of these stowaways
died from being crushed by the actual landing wheels.
In most aircraft, there's very little room left after the massive wheels are retracted,
and to make matters worse there's no light inside the well itself.
As the wheels start to move upwards, it can be difficult to understand how the legs connected
to the wheels will fold up into themselves, and this can be fatal.
Consider it a particularly difficult game of Twister, only instead of embarrassing yourself
in front of friends, your life is at stake.
Putting an arm or a leg in the wrong place can lead to it being mercilessly crushed by
the metal legs of the wheels, or trying to squeeze into what seems like a safe corner
can lead to you being smashed to bits by the giant rubber tires themselves.
The whole time you're also trying to not fall out of an aircraft which is already moving
well over one hundred and fifty miles an hour, with hurricane force winds trying to pry you
loose.
Needless to say, it's no easy task, and it makes us respect the few who survived the
ordeal all the more.
The second leading cause of death appears to be freezing to death, which should come
as no surprise.
The wheel wells are not climate controlled, and are definitely not air tight.
As the plane rises in altitude, the air gets colder and colder until eventually the temperature
can hit as low as -81 fahrenheit (-63 Celsius).
Because stowaways are trying to squeeze into a very tight place, they can't afford to bring
lots of warm clothing to put on and fight the effects of the cold, and often are forced
to simply huddle in the cold dark alone, trying to warm themselves with their own body's heat.
To make matters worse, as the plane rises in altitude, the air also gets thinner, which
makes it even more difficult to breathe.
The lack of oxygen can lead to hypoxia- or the body not getting enough oxygen to survive.
If you've watched our previous video on the man who survived being frozen for twelve hours
though, you'll know that extremely cold temperatures can actually work to help keep a person alive.
The extreme cold will slow down the body's core processes, which in turn drastically
reduces the amount of oxygen needed to survive, thus the lack of air alone is usually not
fatal.
Another problem facing stowaways though is the fact that the very low atmospheric pressure
of high altitude flight is well below the threshold needed to maintain consciousness.
This means that stowaways will go unconscious not long after their plane hits its cruising
altitude.
While again, this can help keep a person alive in extreme cold and oxygen-deprived environments,
the real problems of unconsciousness begin when it's time for the plane to land.
As the plane descends to land, the wheel well is warmed and atmospheric pressure is restored,
which can begin to wake up an unconscious stowaway.
Yet if the stowaway isn't fully alert by the time that the plane comes in for final approach,
typically only taking a few minutes from initial descent, then the landing gear will drop and
the unconscious or semi-conscious stowaway will plummet to their death.
Even if the stowaway manages to not be crushed to death as the wheels retract, and then endures
freezing cold temperatures for hours at a time, and manages to regain consciousness
right before the plane lands, there's two more major problems to overcome.
The first is a condition common to deep sea divers known as the bends.
Because the wheel wells are not pressurized, nitrogen gas bubbles begin to form in the
bloodstream and the fluids inside the body's tissues.
Normally to combat the bends, divers will slowly bring themselves back to the surface,
spending time at different depths to slowly dissolve the nitrogen that has formed in their
bodies.
For a stowaway who's jet is descending at several thousand feet a minute, this isn't
an option.
The nitrogen bubbles begin to burst all at once, causing extreme pain and sometimes even
being fatal.
Next time you pop open a can of soda, imagine that happening inside your body.
The pain can be excruciating, and it makes clinging on to wheels as the plane descends
that much more difficult.
Yet if the stowaway manages to avoid the bends, then they also have the task of actually clinging
on to the aircraft itself as it descends with the wheels lowered.
Airplane landings are basically nothing more than controlled crashes, and because metal
is heavy, it tends to fall out of the sky at very high speeds.
A commercial jet airliner typically comes in for a landing at anywhere between 150 to
166 miles per hour (241 – 267 kph), which is enough speed that the plane is still generating
some lift with its wings and it can land relatively smoothly, because after much research into
the issue major airlines discovered that passengers tend to dislike when their plane lands nose
first into the ground.
It also runs up operating costs as each flight necessitates a brand new aircraft and aircrew
both.
For a stowaway clinging on for dear life, this is equivalent to trying to hang on in
the face of a category five hurricane, all the while being jostled as the aircraft is
buffeted by turbulence during final approach.
Needless to say, some stowaways are unable to keep a grip and fall to their death.
Despite all the dangers though, people continue to attempt to stowaway in the wheel wells
of aircraft, as they are much easier to access than the cargo compartments which are often
locked up.
One twelve year old child from Indonesia actually survived a several hundred mile trip in the
wheel well of a Douglas DC-3 aircraft way back in 1946.
Granted DC-3s had a flight ceiling of around twenty thousand feet, so this particular stowaway
didn't have to deal with many of the dangers that modern stowaways have to when flying
at 39,000 or more feet.
This twelve year old indonesian child would go on to be naturalized in Australia and live
out a happy life.
Unfortunately, a Soviet teenage stowaway two decades later would be crushed to death as
he attempted to flee the Soviet Union in a flight from Moscow to Paris.
Another thirteen year old stowaway from France died when the landing gear of his aircraft
was lowered on final approach and he fell to his death- like with so many who died this
way it's believed that he hadn't fully regained consciousness yet.
A migrant worker in 1995 however froze to death on a flight to Shanghai and his body
fell when the plane was on final approach to the airport, giving a rather rude surprise
to whoever was directly below.
Tragically in August of 1996, two young mongolian boys, aged nine and twelve, both died after
attempting to stowaway in the wheel well of a US Air Force Lockheed C-141.
The twelve year old was discovered crushed to death by the service crew after the plane
landed, and the nine year old would die of his injuries two days later in a US military
hospital.
A similar story with a 50% happier ending occurred later that same year when two Indian
men stowed away on a flight from New Delhi to London.
One of them survived the ten hour flight in the nose wheel at 35,000 feet, but his younger
brother died when he froze to death.
Tragically, the two brothers had paid an informant for knowledge on how to access the baggage
hold of a Boeing 747 from the wheel well, but upon sneaking into the wheel well they
discovered that there was no such access.
Though the surviving brother applied for political asylum after landing, he was denied and sent
back to India on the first flight after leaving hospital- presumably not in the wheel well
this time.
Another man from Burkina Faso failed to hold on to his aircraft's wheels as the plane came
in for a landing and plummeted to his death just before landing.
Most disturbing of all though is the death of an unknown stowaway who was crushed to
death in the wheel well of a Boeing 767, and actually caused a landing gear failure.
The plane was forced to conduct an emergency landing when the wheels wouldn't fully retract,
though unknown to the crew this was because the stowaway's mangled body was preventing
them from doing so.
Upon lowering the wheels for landing, body parts fell on a busy traffic intersection
in a town of Saudi Arabia.
Not all stowaway attempts end tragically though, and the world's first aerial stowaway is credited
to 19 year old Clarence Terhune, who in 1928 stowed away on a German zeppelin flying from
New Jersey in the US to Friedrichshafen, Germany.
He made a bet with his brother-in-law that he could beat all previous stowaways by hitching
an illegal ride aboard the German zeppelin, and revealed himself to the crew aboard the
Atlantic ocean.
He was made to work in the kitchen for the remainder of the flight and arrested after
landing, though the German people considered him something of a hero and sent him telegrams,
dinner invitations, and even job offers.
Terrifyingly, the American Federal Aviation Administration openly admits that the full
list of stowaways who die attempting to hide in the wheel wells of an aircraft is unknown,
and current estimates are incomplete.
The FAA says that due to so many airports being near the ocean, an unknown number of
stowaways have surely fallen to their death into the sea as their plane came in for a
landing.
This leaves the real number of people who have died in the wheel wells of an aircraft
unknown, though it's clear that only extreme desperation could possibly drive a man or
woman to do such a thing.
Next time you fly, consider that while you're enjoying the in-flight movie and a complimentary
packet of peanuts, a stranger may be dying just a few feet away in the wheel well of
your aircraft.
Would you ever risk stowing away in the wheel well of an airplane?
How would you survive?
Let us know in the comments!
And as always if you enjoyed this video don't forget to Like, Share, and Subscribe for more
great content!