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A suspected stowaway is
being treated in a London hospital after being found unconscious on Thursday on
a British Airways flight from Johannesburg after the plane had landed, British
police said on Friday ©Justin Tallis (AFP)
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A suspected stowaway is being treated in a London
hospital after being found unconscious on Thursday on a British Airways flight
from Johannesburg after the plane had landed, British police said on Friday.
Police said that also
on Thursday they had found the body of a dead man on the roof of an office
under the flight path to Heathrow airport and were trying to work out if he
could have fallen off the same plane.
The man found alive is
believed to be 24 years old and police said in a statement that he was found in
the undercarriage of the plane.
"His condition is
now described as critical," the statement said.
A police spokesman told
AFP that the possibility that the two men were on the same plane is "one
of the lines of inquiry".
The police were called
about the suspected stowaway on the 8,000-mile (12,875-kilometre) flight from
South Africa at 8:28 am and about the body at 9:35 am.
The flight takes 11
hours and outside temperatures during the journey would fall as low as minus 60
degrees Celsius (minus 76 Fahrenheit).
A British Airways
spokeswoman said: "We are working with the Metropolitan Police and the
authorities in Johannesburg to establish the facts surrounding this very rare
case".
The body was found on
the roof of the offices of notonthehighstreet.com, an online retailer, in
Richmond, a wealthy southwest suburb of London.
"Officers and the
London ambulance service attended and found the body of a male on the roof of
the premises," the company said in a statement.
"The death is
currently being treated as unexplained but early indications are that the body
may be that of an airline stowaway," the statement said.
There have been several
cases of stowaways being found dead clinging to the landing gear of planes.
In 2012, a man from
Mozambique fell from the undercarriage of a Heathrow-bound flight from Angola
onto a street under the flight path near Richmond.
An inquest found that
he may have survived freezing temperatures for most of the flight but was
"dead or nearly dead" by the time he hit the ground.
"It's very
shocking when it's so close to you," said Reverend Neil Summers from the
St John the Divine church opposite where the body was found on Thursday.
"In one sense it's
not totally surprising as it's happened before," he said.
In April, an Indonesian
stowaway survived an hour-long flight from Sumatra to Jakarta hidden in the
undercarriage of the plane.
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