Friday, 24 August 2012

Fare dodger strikes unlucky .

Some people will try it on for a free ride. I have no sympathy for these people who are simple criminals trying to steal a free ride. This is not just a revenue loss problem on buses, coaches and trains but you can also get dare-devil fare dodgers on planes too. This is silly because outside of the pressurised passenger cabin their is a lack of oxygen and temperatures drop to minus 60C due to the altitude.

The body of a presumed stowaway was discovered on a British Airways plane that arrived at Heathrow from South Africa on Thursday.

The airline said the unidentified man's body was found in the landing gear bay of a Boeing 747. The hiding place would have exposed the man to temperatures as low as 60C below freezing and oxygen deprivation during the 11-and-a-half-hour flight from Cape Town.

Metropolitan police officers and ambulance staff were called to the airport at 6.25am, and the man was pronounced dead at 7.07am. A police spokesman said: "The death is being treated as non-suspicious. Inquiries are ongoing to establish the man's identity."

Airports Company South Africa, which runs Cape Town international airport, said a man had been spotted scaling its perimeter fence on Wednesday night and heading towards a BA plane preparing for takeoff. It said security officers had searched the airfield in vain.

The BA spokesman said stowaways were a rare occurrence on any passenger aircraft, and there was very little chance of surviving a flight in the landing gear bay. Anyone hiding in the compartment risks being crushed or burned by the wheels after the plane takes off.

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