Apparent Stowaway Falls From Airliner Over London

Body lands in south London garden
By Bob Cronin,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 1, 2019 3:47 PM CDT
Apparent Stowaway Falls From Airliner Over London
The body of a man thought to be an airline stowaway landed Monday in a residential garden in Clapham, south London.   (Dominic Lipinski/PA via AP)

A man believed to have stowed away on a Kenya Airways flight fell from the landing gear to a London garden Sunday, police say, per the BBC. After his body was found, a bag, water, and food were found in the landing gear compartment of the plane when it landed at Heathrow Airport. The 4,250-mile flight from Nairobi to London takes nearly nine hours, the airline said. "It is unfortunate that a person has lost his life by stowing aboard one of our aircraft," a spokesperson said, "and we express our condolences." Police said in a statement that they're working to establish the man's identity, per CNN.

A next-door neighbor who heard the man land said he hit the ground just a few feet from a resident who was sunbathing in his garden, per the Guardian. He said that a plane spotter who was following the flight on an app saw that the body fell and arrived at the Clapham home about when police did. The body "was an ice block," the neighbor said. "If it had been two seconds later, he would have landed on the common where there were hundreds of people—my kids were in the garden 15 minutes before" the body landed, he said. (Two stowaways pulled a similar stunt in 2015; only one survived.)

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