Boy Who Hid in Plane’s Wheel Well Beat Long Odds in Surviving 5 ½-Hour Flight
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
You Can Survive A Flight In A Jet's Wheel Well,
But Probably Won't (npr.org) Experts stunned by local boy's Hawaii flight in
wheel well (sfgate.com) Teen Survives Flight To Hawaii In Jet's Wheel Well,
FBI Says (npr.org) Teen OK after riding in wheel well of Hawaii jet
(boston.com) Survival at High Altitude: Wheel-Well Passengers
(faa.gov)I'm more angry that hundreds of millions, or even billions of dollars are spent to train a workforce to identify tubes of toothpaste on a screen, but anyone at an airport that wants a knife can just order a steak from an airport restaurant.
It makes me sad that the public can tolerate such ignorance and waste.
Edit: US airports. Since this article was about a US airline operating in the United States I thought that went without saying.
The goal of airport security is to make you feel safe by knowing other people have to go through the same ordeal (ie, security theater). It is more akin to hazing rituals than actually security.
That said, airport perimeter security is pretty high on the list of things it does make pretty good sense to care about. After all, he could have been carrying a bomb :)
I wonder whether technologies like Oculus might change the effectiveness of security cameras. A single man could theoretically "be" in multiple places at one time from a security perspective. And the sense of actually being on-location, as opposed to having something on a screen that can be ignored or missed, might return that multiplier to monitoring a location using a network of video cameras streamed to somebody's headset.
Implementation of more automated surveillance to help SUPPLEMENT (not replace) existing security guards watching monitors is ideal. It'll be interesting as security ramps up to include things like facial/ body recognition.
CNN article: http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/22/travel/plane-stowaway-security...
If someone were to just hop the plane and plant a bomb and conceal it, it could be easily overlooked by any observer.
I guess at the end of the day it is more the perception of safety than actual safety we are getting
And that is exactly what I think that the TSA et al. provide.
Don't try this at home.
However, it does take a bit longer than that to climb to that altitude.
Lets say this person was found loitering in the area and someone asked him how he got there and he told he hid in the plane's wheel's.
Most people would term that as a impossibility and decide he got there some other way.
if he was found unconscious on the plane's wheel, then isn't it a "black swan" like event that breaks down most of our existing assumptions on the subject of human endurance.
edit : still have not read news other than headlines and trying to make a point about perceptions/assumptions.
Often they fall out of the wheel well when the landing gear deploy and are found some distance from the airport.
Most people easily survive with only 20% of the oxygen level found at sea level, but quickly become unconscious and enter a sort of hibernation state. Then they may slowly succumb to cold, or simply are not awake and able to respond sensibly when landing gear deploys, or die from complications from high altitude pulmonary edema or high altitude cerebral edema.
The media angle appearing in some articles that this is some astonishing thing that has never been seen before and for which there is no scientific explanation is just the standard media hysteria tactic used to collect eyeballs and views by making exaggerated claims.
It also seems like at those temperatures most people would sucumb to hypothermia, no?
If earlier it was assumed that -40 c would kill in 5 mins and now we have proof that someone has travelled at -62 c for 5+ hrs and with minimal oxygen.
Isn't that a black swan like event.
Obviously we can't test for these things but we can find limits through such incidences.
PS : whats with the downvotes. Do some folks want everyone to parrot the same line?
If it's not a hoax, it's seems like it would be more of a medical miracle than people are realizing? There's way less oxygen at that altitude than at the top of mt everest, plus I've read it got as cold as -65F.
Edit: Tried to explain better. :-(
My extremely uninformed hypothesis is the mammalian diving reflex kicks in since the article mentioned it was cold?????
The wheel well isn't out in the slipstream and probably stays significantly warmer than the ambient temperature, both from having a human in there to heat it and having warm aircraft components nearby. After takeoff, the tires will be hot from hysteresis losses, and the hydraulic fluid will be hot. I'm not sure what other equipment is up in the wheel well for easy maintenance access, but I wouldn't be surprised if the wheel well had several pieces of equipment providing heat throughout the flight. There's also plain heat conduction from the aircraft cabin into the wheel well. The cold also helps survival in hypoxic conditions. Clearly it's not a good idea, but it has been survived many times before.
Edit: http://cdn-www.airliners.net/aviation-photos/photos/1/8/8/17... shows a lot of the equipment in the wheel well, which would have helped keep the well warmer than ambient temperatures.