Two bodies found in JetBlue plane landing gear, two weeks after body found on United Airlines
Two people have been found dead in the landing gear compartment of a plane – the second tragic discovery in two weeks.
Two people have been found dead in the wheel well of a JetBlue plane in the US just two weeks after another body was found in the same area on a United Airlines plane.
The two bodies were discovered on Monday night, local time, during a post-flight maintenance inspection, JetBlue said on Tuesday.
The Airbus A320 had landed in Fort Lauderdale, Florida from New York City.
An investigation is underway to identify the people and find out how they got into the landing gear compartment.
They didn’t necessarily get on the plane’s latest flight in New York. The flight had been in Jamaica and Salt Lake City, Utah the same day, according to flight tracking data.
An unnamed law enforcement official told CNN the bodies were badly decomposed.
“This is a heartbreaking situation, and we are committed to working closely with authorities to support their efforts to understand how this occurred,” JetBlue said in a statement.
It is the second investigation launched by a US-based airline within a fortnight, after a body was found on a United Airlines plane that had flown from Chicago to Maui, Hawaii on Christmas Eve.
The Boeing 780-10’s wheel well was only accessible “from the outside of the aircraft,” United Airlines said in a statement.
Stowaways at times have jumped into an aircraft by hanging on to the aircraft’s landing gear.
If they don’t fall to their death while the plane is taking off, they risk being crushed in a confined space when the gears retract, falling when the plane is landing, dying from the heat produced by the engines, or from hypothermia, caused by the extreme cold at high altitudes, according to the US Federal Aviation Administration.
The recent incidents have raised security concerns.
In November, a stowaway flew from New York to Paris on a Delta Airlines flight without a boarding pass or identification.
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