- Two individuals were found dead inside the landing-gear compartment of a JetBlue aircraft Monday evening. Though a rare occurrence, it is a part of a cluster of incidents that will concern national-security entities, Flight Safety Foundation president and CEO Hassan Shahidi told Fortune.
Two people were found dead inside the landing-gear compartment of a JetBlue aircraft on Monday evening following a routine post-flight inspection, the airline said Tuesday. It’s the latest in a string of incidents that could raise concern for national-security bodies.
The individuals were found in a flight that arrived at the Fort Lauderdale–Hollywood International Airport from New York City around 11:10 p.m., according to flight-tracking platform FlightAware. The identities of the people and how they gained access to the plane are under investigation, a JetBlue spokesperson told Fortune in a statement. The airline did not say whether the two individuals found were stowaways.
“This is a heartbreaking situation, and we are committed to working closely with authorities to support their efforts to understand how this occurred,” the spokesperson said.
The discovery of the two bodies adds to a streak of similar safety incidents on commercial flights during a busy holiday travel season. Two weeks ago, a body was discovered in the wheel well of United Airlines flight 202 from Chicago to Hawaii. The same week, Delta Air Lines detected and caught a stowaway on a flight from Seattle to Honolulu as the plane was taxiing. The same individual, who was arrested for trespassing, had been caught a month prior while similarly trying to sneak onto a Delta flight from New York to Paris without a ticket.
A national security concern
The Federal Aviation Administration manages more than 16 million flights annually, making stowaway incidents rare. But the recent cluster of events could indicate that multiple individuals have been able to circumvent airport security to gain access to aircrafts, according to Hassan Shahidi, president and CEO of nonprofit aviation safety nonprofit the Flight Safety Foundation. These multiple incidents escalate the concern beyond airline safety to a potential matter of national security, he said.
“This is not just about two people, unfortunately, dying in this situation,” Shahidi told Fortune. “This now involves the security systems and the Department of Homeland Security and airport security. This is no longer just the FAA and airlines. This is a broader set of concerns.”
The Department of Homeland Security and FBI did not immediately respond to Fortune’s requests for comment.
The FAA confirmed to CNN last month it does not formally track stowaway cases, but the recent cases could cause the regulatory body to reconsider and start formally tracking data, Shahidi said. Airlines do track this data, according to Shahidi, but JetBlue did not respond to Fortune’s inquiry.
Aviation’s next steps
Shahidi couldn’t say for certain why individuals decide to sneak onto flights, though in the three most recently reported instances, people were traveling from cooler to warmer climates. These discreet and risky forms of travel are often unsuccessful and fatal, with about 80% of people dying while attempting to hide in an external aircraft component during a flight, according to a 2011 FAA report. Most are either crushed by the flight equipment once it retracts into the aircraft, or suffocate or freeze due to the changing oxygen levels and temperatures in flight.
Those investigating the incident will likely look at the entrances and exits surrounding the airport where the flight originated, according to Shahidi. Moving forward, airports and airlines will likely “redouble their effort to secure those entry and exit points,” Shahidi said, with regulatory and security entities taking other proactive measures.
“They need to really take a hard look at those procedures, making sure that gaps are identified, any weaknesses in their systems and processes are identified,” he added.
