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The 16-year-old boy was found on February 5, 2021 on a jet that landed at Maastricht Airport (pictured) after crossing the North Sea from Stansted at 19,000 feet. /Daily Mail.

Kenya

Kenyan stowaway boy survives freezing temperatures on 1-hour flight from London to Holland

The boy was found on Friday morning on a jet that landed at Maastricht Airport after crossing the North Sea from Stansted at 19,000 feet.

NAIROBI, Kenya Feb 6 – A 16-year-old Kenyan teenage stowaway has survived freezing temperatures while clinging to the landing gear of a freight plane that flew from London to the Netherlands, Daily Mail reports. 

The boy was found on Friday morning on a jet that landed at Maastricht Airport after crossing the North Sea from Stansted at 19,000 feet. 

The teenager is lucky to be alive after a number of other people have frozen to death trying the same thing because of the sub-zero temperatures at high altitude. 

In some cases people have died and fallen out either into the sea and in 2019 a stowaway fell from a Kenya Airways jet from Nairobi to Heathrow and was found on the patio of a Clapham garden. His identity and nationality remains unclear todate.

The Dutch Royal Marechaussee – a police branch of the Netherlands’ armed forces -tweeted that they believe the stowaway is a 16-year-old boy from Kenya and that he is now in hospital with hypothermia. His identity was not immediately provided and authorities said they were investigating links to a human trafficking syndicate.

‘The presumably 16-year-old Kenyan boy is doing reasonably well,’ they added.

The flight in question is thought to have been a Turkish Airlines cargo flight operated by an Airbus A330.

Dutch aviation publication Luchtvaart Nieuws reported the only flight to land from London at Maastricht Saturday was TK6305, operated by a Turkish Airlines Airbus A330-200 freighter.

‘He had tremendous luck to get through this,’ a spokesman for Maastricht Aachen Airport told netherlandsnewslive. Stowaways on aeroplanes are rare, and most people sadly don’t survive the journey.

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Most stowaways in the lower part of the wheel well either freeze to death or fall from hiding places during flight. Stansted has been asked to comment.

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