Stowaway’s dead body found inside plane’s landing gear as police make grizzly discovery

A man’s dead body has been found by police inside the wheel arch of a plane that had just landed in Amsterdam from Nigeria.

The man, who is believed to have been a stowaway, was found this afternoon at Schiphol airport.

Authorities tweeted that they are still investigating the man’s identity and cause of death.

However, they believe hypothermia was the cause of death and think the man hid in the area of the aircraft for 6 hours and 45 minutes as it flew from Lagos, the Nigerian capital to the Netherlands.

A spokesperson for the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee told AD: “The man had holed up in the wheel arch of the plane. The low temperatures have presumably been fatal to him during the flight.”

There have been several cases of stowaways found in the wheel arches of planes as it is becoming an increasingly common hiding place for people wishing to enter other countries.

In a similar incident, a 16-year-old boy from Kenya was then hidden in the landing gear of a plane flying from London to Maastricht Aachen Airport.

Following the flight in February this year, the teen had been hospitalised with severe hypothermia.

It is believed that he later applied for asylum in the Netherlands.

In 2019, a mystery man had fallen from the sky after hiding in the landing gear on a Kenya Airways flight to London Heathrow.

His body was found in Chlapam Garden and was described by witnesses to BBC news as a ‘frozen block’ when he hit the ground.

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According the the UN Refugee Agency guidelines, “stowaway asylum-seekers must be protected against forcible return to their country of origin” as they are in a “particularly vulnerable situation in need of international protection and durable solutions.”