Two dead bodies were discovered inside a JetBlue plane’s landing gear after it flew from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport to the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in Florida on Monday night.
The bodies were found during a routine post-flight maintenance inspection when Flight 1801 landed in South Florida after 11:00 p.m., The New York Post reported. Authorities have not identified the two people found dead as they continue to investigate the incident.
“The circumstances surrounding how they accessed the aircraft remain under investigation,” JetBlue said, according to CBS News. “This is a heartbreaking situation, and we are committed to working closely with authorities to support their efforts to understand how this occurred.”
The JetBlue Airbus A320 departed New York City at 8:20 p.m. and arrived in Fort Lauderdale less than three hours later, CBS News reported. The plane began its day in Jamaica before flying to JFK in New York, then flew to Salt Lake City, and then back to JFK before its flight to South Florida. Broward County, Florida, Sheriff homicide detectives are seeking to determine how the two people accessed the landing gear compartment before the flight took off.
The JetBlue incident is similar to when a body was discovered in the wheel well of a United Airlines flight that landed in Maui after taking off from Chicago on Christmas Eve. Authorities are still investigating how the person got onto the tarmac and then accessed the wheel well of the plane in Chicago.
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In the past, people attempting to hitch a ride on an airplane have been crushed in the wheel well when the landing gear retracts, CNN reported. The wheel well is a compartment under an aircraft that stores the landing gear and is usually a tight space — often smaller than the trunk of a car.
Dozens of stowaways have attempted to hitch illegal rides on airplanes by climbing into the wheel well, but multiple factors make it nearly impossible for a stowaway to survive a ride in that space. As a plane reaches higher altitudes, oxygen levels drop, and stowaways lose consciousness. Temperatures can also drop to 75 degrees below zero. Nearly 80% of the roughly 130 people who have attempted to catch a ride on the outside of an airplane since 1947 have died, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
