Can I survive in the wheel well of a 747?
Post written by: beagoodmom
I read an interesting article on CNN.com a while back about a stowaway found in the wheel well of a 747 after a transatlantic flight. Apparently, another stowaway was found in a plane’s wheel well on Jan 12 after a Sudan-to-Atlanta flight. Both men had died. This led to a big question that I had to Google. Could a person survive in the wheel well of an airplane? The immediate answer would seem to be “NO!” But then why do people try it? I am sure I have read about this before these 2 cases. Surprisingly, I could not find the answer to my question directly on Google, so I asked a few of my work friends what they thought. They brought up some interesting points.
Temperature: The average temperature at 30,000 (average cruising height for an aircraft) ft is -49 degrees Fahrenheit. If any part of the person’s body was exposed, the wind chill would of course be ridiculous; planes fly at over 500 miles per hour. When your body core temperature drops to 82 degrees or below, death is likely. I am not sure how long it would take for the core temperature to drop to 82 degrees, but I assume it’s not long at that temperature. I also learned on this website that you can freeze your corneas if you open your eyes at extremely low temperatures with extremely high winds. Not really relevant in this case, since the stowaways are probably inside the retracted wheel mechanism , but interesting nonetheless.
Air Pressure: At 30,000 ft the atmosphere has 30% of the oxygen you would have at sea level. Ascending to that height very rapidly could kill you instantly as your brain and lungs are deprived of oxygen immediately.
The Wheel mechanisms: the wheels of an airplane retract and extend, but the space in which they do so is very small. Being crushed by the wheels themselves as they are retracted is very likely.
So, all we could come up with at work was that people must not know these 3 important facts, or they would never consider stowing away in a plane’s wheel well. Maybe before they do it, they Google “can I survive in the wheel well of an airplane” and get no responses, just like I did. Then they mistakenly believe the answer must be “yes, you can survive.” For that reason, I am posting this important public service announcement and relying on beagooddad’s popularity with Google to get it posted high in the search engines so no other idiot makes the same mistake.
Can I survive in the wheel well of a 747? No!
Update: It looks like somebody forgot to read this post before crawling into the nose gear of an airplane flying from China to San Francisco.
April 13th, 2007 at 6:06 pm
Did you google: can i survive in a wheel well of an airplane
Because the first link says that someone did survive a 4 hour flight from Cuba to Canada (with a little luck).
BTW, you’re already number 2 for that search.
April 14th, 2007 at 7:22 am
To be fair, BeAGoodMom originally wrote this post a couple months ago but it took me that long to get around to editing the links. So maybe they weren’t there at the time.
Plus, he only survived on a technicality. Without the defect in the plane, he would have died.
Number 2 already…that ought to bring in the visitors
April 14th, 2007 at 11:45 am
Thanks for gathering those facts. It’s amazing when you think about how the early aviators survived the bitter cold when flying open cockpits and later, tin cans with wings.
To be an effective public service announcement, you need to post this in languages other than English. Seems like these incidents happen traveling to English speaking countries.
But that might be a moot point. I may be stereotyping, but it seems to me the desperate folks making these dangerous trips are poor and may not have Internet access.
But I guess if you manage to make one person think twice about doing it, you’ve done a great service.
Take care.
June 24th, 2007 at 9:36 am
Getting ready for take off, I noticed a tiny spider outside in the corner of the window. He stayed through take off, through the ascent, and just clung there. I couldn’t imagine what to…his little web must have been quite strong. Somewhere over Iceland, he blew off and we lost him. But I thought a lot about that little spider after that.
Now I wonder how many people sit around and search about surviving in the wheel well of a plane. Of course, I used to get quite a few hits for the search, “Chicken mop.” So there you have it. Insomnia + Google = Traffic.
June 25th, 2007 at 6:16 am
Wow! And here i am, complaining about freezing to death in my air-conditioned office at 21degress C… what can’t you learn on the internet these days…
March 29th, 2008 at 4:40 am
Hi there,
I’m using this wonderful textbook to teach kids English and in it there’s this true story you should know about! In 1969 the 22-year old Armando Socarras Ramirez left Cuba in the wheel well of a boeing 707. Newsweek reported that doctors at the hospital in Spain were at lost to explain how Armando survived the flight - But he did!!!!
Another case took place on June 4th, 1993, a 13 year-old Colombian boy stowed away in the wheel well of a DC-8 and flew from Bogota to Miami…he too, survived the flight but arrived covered with frost. Hope u find this information interesting.