Security officials at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) were last evening hard pressed to explain whether a man illegally managed to climb into the wheel well of a cargo flight from South Africa to the Netherlands that had stopped briefly in Nairobi on Sunday.
This is after police in the Netherlands confirmed that the stowaway who was found hiding in the wheel section of a plane belonging to Cargolux had told them he is a 22-year-old from Nairobi, Kenya.
“The man is doing well under the circumstances and has been transported to the hospital,” said the Dutch Military Police.
“He's applied for asylum. We're investigating the man's travel route, as well as whether it's a case of migrant smuggling,” they explained.
Despite the silence by Kenyan authorities, flight tracking websites show that the Boeing 747-400F operating flight number CV7156 took off from Johannesburg, South Africa, for Nairobi at 7:30pm local time on Saturday.
The plane landed at JKIA at 12:32am on Sunday. It spent at least four hours on the tarmac at JKIA’s cargo section as some of the freight it had carried from South Africa was offloaded. It then taxied to the runway at 4am, before taking off for an eight-hour trip to Amsterdam.
It is still not yet known at what point the stowaway boarded the plane. However, the confirmation by Dutch police that the stowaway boarded the plane in Nairobi and that he is a Kenyan is what has set the alarm bells ringing.
Access to the airside at JKIA’s cargo section is restricted to a few airport officials, cleaners and specific people working at licensed bonded warehouses.
This is because the airside, which is the section where planes are loaded, is considered international space. One not only needs a pass, but also security clearance to access this part of an airport.
Apart from accessing the airside, the stowaway, whose identity is still unknown, miraculously survived the eight-hour trip at cruising altitude inside a non-pressurised cabin at extremely life threatening conditions, surprising the Dutch police when they found him alive.
“The man was found alive in the nose wheel section of the plane and was taken to hospital in a stable condition,” Royal Dutch Military Police spokesperson Joanna Helmonds told media.
“This is definitely very unusual that someone was able to survive the cold at such a height – very, very unusual,” she said.
According to the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), more than 75 percent of the people who attempt to hitch a ride on the belly or the wheel well of a jet liner do not survive. Long range jetliners like the one the stowaway might have boarded in Nairobi on Sunday cruise at more than 35,000 feet above sea level.
At that altitude, the temperature outside is about -54 degrees Celsius and the air pressure is four times lower than at sea level. These harsh conditions not only make it difficult to breath, but the cold can also kill someone.
And in case someone survives the flight, there is a chance they could fall to the ground during the plane’s final descent.
Police spokesman Bruno Shioso yesterday morning promised to give a comprehensive answer on what may have transpired at JKIA on Saturday night, before later ignoring our calls.
“I will get you the details of the questions you have asked,” said Mr Shioso.
The Nation, however, understands that the government is cautious of talking about the matter for fear of jeopardising the security rating of JKIA. As a Category One airport; a status it attained in 2017, JKIA is supposed to demonstrate compliance with the top International Civil Aviation Organisation safety and security standards.
Yet despite being expected to uphold the highest safety and security standards as demanded of Category One airports, JKIA has in the past three years found itself dealing with stowaway controversies on two occasions.
In 2019, the body of a stowaway fell off a Kenya Airways plane as it descended into London, United Kingdom. Although British media identified the stowaway as a Kenyan, government authorities put up a spirited fight to deny he was Kenyan, even claiming that the man identified through a police e-fit (Electronic Facial Identification Technique) was alive and in prison.
Last year, a 16-year-old boy that Dutch police said was from Kenya was found alive at Maastricht airport after hiding in the landing gear bay area of the fuselage of a Turkish Airlines cargo plane that had flown from London.
