Florida authorities have identified the bodies of two people found inside the landing gear of a JetBlue commercial airplane as teenagers from the Dominican Republic. The Broward County Sheriff’s Office confirmed to the Palm Beach Post that the victims were 18-year-old Jeik Lusi and 16-year-old Elvis Castillo, following extensive DNA testing.
The tragic discovery occurred on January 6, when the aircraft landed at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport after taking off from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport. Maintenance crews found the bodies during a routine post-flight inspection of the JetBlue aircraft.
Dangerous Method Of Travel Claims More Lives
The sheriff’s statement did not reveal how the teens gained access to the landing gear of the JetBlue plane or disclosed their official cause of death. However, NBC South Florida reported that the plane had made a stop in Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic, on January 5, suggesting the teenagers may have boarded there.
This incident highlights the deadly risks of aircraft stowaways. While investigators haven’t confirmed whether the teenagers attempted to stow away, people often use wheel wells, nose wells, and other unpressurized areas to sneak onto aircraft.
Stowaways face extreme dangers in these unpressurized compartments. Temperatures can plummet between minus 58 degrees and 76 degrees Fahrenheit during flight. The lack of oxygen and risk of being crushed by the plane’s wheels make this practice frequently fatal.
Rare Survival Stories Exist Among Tragic Outcomes
Despite the high fatality rate, some stowaways have miraculously survived similar journeys. Last year, a person was found alive in the undercarriage bay of an Algerian carrier’s aircraft in Paris. In January 2022, a man survived in the nose wheel of a cargo plane arriving in Amsterdam from South Africa.
Another stowaway survived in 2021, when a man rode in the landing gear compartment of an American Airlines flight from Guatemala to Miami. Perhaps most remarkable was a 15-year-old boy who reportedly survived a five-and-a-half-hour Hawaiian Airlines flight in 2014, hidden inside a plane’s wheel well from San Jose to Maui.
