He traveled in the nose wheel area of a cargo plane.
The Dutch authorities have located a young man alive hidden in the front wheel area of a cargo plane that landed at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport from South Africa with a stopover in Nairobi, confirmed today to Eph a spokesman for the Dutch gendarmerie (Marechaussee).
The young man, who “is in good health”, was located at noon this Sunday after traveling as a stowaway to Amsterdam, although the gendarmes will question him this Monday to determine his identity, the place from which he got on the plane, what is his nationality and his age, although they believe he is “between 18 and 30 years old”.
The authorities have also opened an investigation “because it is an illegal border crossing”, so they will still have to determine if it is a case of human trafficking.
“How did he get here and how did he get to the plane to hide? How did he manage to survive such a long journey? We do not know yet if he got help from another person to make this journey. We hope to be able to obtain an answer to all pending questions throughout the day today, “said the spokesman.
It is also unclear “his ultimate intentions” and if his ultimate goal was to seek asylum in the Netherlands or travel to another country for other reasons, he stressed.
The young man would have spent between eight and eleven hours on board, depending on whether he boarded the plane in Kenya or Johannesburg, although the Marechaussee stresses that it is not often that a stowaway travels hidden in the front wheel of the plane – it is more common to find stowaways in the landing gear – but “it is very, very rare” for a person to survive such a trip because temperatures can reach 50 degrees below zero.
In this case, the stowaway was located conscious, but with symptoms of hypothermia.
“The man is fine under the circumstances and has been transferred to the hospital” for further checks, said the gendarmerie, who immediately covered the young man to raise his body temperature when he was discovered during a rigorous check of the aircraft. (I)
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