Jan. 7, 2025 By Bill Parry
New York’s hometown airline officials made a chilling discovery on board one of its aircraft after a JetBlue flight out of JFK Airport landed in Florida on Monday night.
Two people were found dead in the landing gear compartment of the Airbus A320-232 just after 11 p.m. during a “routine post-flight maintenance inspection” by a JetBlue ground crew at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, according to a spokesperson at their Long Island City corporate headquarters.
Federal investigators are working to determine how the two stowaways were able to make their way onto Flight 1801 undetected at JFK.
“Tragically, both individuals were deceased,” the JetBlue spokesperson said Tuesday. “At this time, the identities of the individuals and the circumstances surrounding how they accessed the aircraft remain under investigation.”
When asked to comment, a Port Authority spokesperson deferred to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
QNS has contacted the FAA and is awaiting a response.
Refugees and other desperate people risk journeys as stowaways in aircraft landing gear compartments despite the risks of being crushed by retracting landing gear, falling when the gear deploys for landing, or experiencing severe hypoxia and hypobaria in-flight, according to the National Library of Medicine.
Temperatures inside an inflight aircraft wheel well can drop as low as negative 60 degrees Fahrenheit.
“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 spokesperson said.
Kcassman