Tag Archives for stowaway.
A woman who famously stowed away on a Delta flight to Paris—spending hours undetected in lavatories—has struck again, sneaking through TSA and boarding a United flight from Newark to Milan.
After a harrowing 622-mile flight clinging to a jet’s landing gear, the boy was discovered alive in Delhi—only to be forced onto a return flight to Afghanistan the very same day.
A passenger accidentally boarded Delta flight 607 from New York JFK to Las Vegas on Sunday. He meant to fly to Los Angeles.
On Christmas Eve another stowaway was caught on a Delta Air Lines flight. This time Delta 487 from Seattle to Honolulu had someone onboard without a ticket. They’d managed to get through TSA security with no boarding pass, and to get past the gate agent and onto the Airbus A321neo.
She managed to get through security without a boarding pass (so TSA botched things first) and then boarded the aircraft without showing credentials to do so either. The flight was completely sold out, so no seats were available to her, but she reportedly hid in a lavatory for takeoff but eventually drew suspicion because she would leave “one lavatory and then just going into a different one…staying inside for a long time.”
A passenger sitting at the front of the coach cabin on the Airbus A350 saw a family of 5 seat themselves in the ‘Comfort+’ section. However two of those seats were already occupied. A flight attendant comes in to sort out the ‘duplicate seats’. But those weren’t the only stowaways – three others actually made it to Los Angeles.
With temperatures falling to less than 50 degrees below zero at cruising altitude, and lack of oxygen, conditions are excruciating. There are 132 people known to have stowed away in aircraft wheel wells between 1947 and 2021, and they have a mortality rate of 77%.
A woman boarded a Southwest Airlines flight to New Orleans without a ticket trying to see a Beyonce’ on tour.
The flight’s manifest has one fewer passenger on it than there were on the plane. According to one report the flight was sold out and there were more people on the plane than seats.
One man hopped a British Airways plane out of Africa and made it the 11 hour journey across 5500 miles – and lived to tell the tale.
30 year old Themba Cabeka “held on to the jet’s undercarriage for the entire 11-hour flight from South Africa to London Heathrow in 2015.” He was discovered on the runway after the plane landed at Heathrow, and he was unconscious and hospitalized for six months. He was granted asylum and now lives in Liverpool. His friend for the journey wasn’t as lucky.
A 26 year old worker at the Havana airport stowed away in the baggage hold of a Swift Air charter flight to Miami.
Apparently witnesses heard “what sounded like a dog barking in the cargo area” and upon investigation found the man who “asked for water.”
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
