A stowaway is recovering this weekend in a Dutch hospital after a lift from Nairobi, Kenya to the Netherlands in the landing gear of an Airbus A330 Freighter.
Authorities found the 16-year-old alive on the plane and suffering from severe hypothermia, The Telegraph reported. He is currently being treated in a hospital in Maastricht after traveling 5,000 miles.
It is not known how the teenager, who is from Kenya, managed to get into the landing gear, but authorities said he was lucky to be alive.
While it may seem like a good idea for a free flight, elevators in an airplane’s landing gear often lead to death from exposure. Flights typically spend hours at a chilling elevation of 38,000 feet, where oxygen is also scarce.
“He was very lucky to endure this,” a spokesman for Maastricht Aachen Airport told Netherland News Live.