The airline stowaway incident this week made us reflect on a similar incident that happened here in Hawaii. In that amazing and, to this day, unexplained miracle, a 15-year-old flew in the wheel-well of a Hawaiian Airlines Boeing 767 from San Jose to Maui. It has never been determined how this boy, Yahye Abdi, survived the extreme cold and lack of oxygen for the five-hour flight across the Pacific.
Most stowaway incidents result in death. This one was a miracle.
To date, the FAA said there have been more than one hundred such events since it started tracking these stowaways 75 years ago. Of those, about 80% have resulted in death. That makes the Hawaii event even more surprising and memorable.
In this latest incident this week, unfortunately, things didn’t go quite as well. The stowaway went into intensive care in critical condition following a 2 1/2 hour flight from North Africa to France. He suffered from hypothermia, it was reported. The man had no identification, so further details haven’t been released about his identity, although it’s been estimated that his age was between 15 and 30 years.
In other recent airline wheel section stowaway incidents, one stowaway died when he fell from a plane onto a house in London as the flight was arriving at Heathrow following a nine-hour trip from Nairobi. That while another stowaway lived following an eleven-hour flight from South Africa to Amsterdam.
Stowaways typically suffer from hypoxia and hypothermia.
In the Hawaii stowaway event, the teenager, Yahye Abdi, appeared to suffer from Hypoxia but didn’t have frostbite. It has been suggested that some heat from equipment located near the wheel well could have offered some protection from the otherwise extreme cold.
Before an airport surveillance video surfaced showing the stowaway exiting the wheel well of the Hawaiian Airlines plane, some doubted the authenticity of the story. Yahye was found walking in the Kahalui Airport apron area and was reported to authorities. When he was examined, he was reported to have incurred no injuries, although he was sent to the hospital for examination.
Hawaiian Airlines’ Stowaway scaled a fence at San Jose Airport and found the plane.
At San Jose, where the incident began, the airport reported, “It does appear that Yahye did scale a part of our perimeter fence line under cover of darkness and remained undetected as he then proceeded onto the aircraft ramp and then proceeded into the wheel well of the aircraft.”
Prior to that Hawaii stowaway event, the FAA said that the last known survivor of a stowaway incident was in August 2013 on a domestic flight in Nigeria, Africa. There was also a fatality at Dulles International Airport in February 2014. That flight traveled from Johannesburg, South Africa, on Feb. 12, 2014, via Dakar, Senegal, before landing at Dulles on Feb. 14, 2014.
Hawaiian Airlines said this of the San Jose to Maui stowaway incident. “Our primary concern now is for the well-being of the boy, who is exceptionally lucky to have survived.”
To our knowledge he was never charged with any crime, but following a brief hospitalization, was instead released to child protective services on Maui. Both medical and aviation experts remained simply stunned.
Yahye Abdi scaled the SJC airport fence in the middle of the night. Then he picked a plane that “was the closest one I could find that was going to go west.” He wanted to reunite with his mother, whom he hadn’t seen since he was seven years old. She lived at the time in an Ethiopian refugee camp. After the incident, his father in California arrived to take Yahye home. According to his dad, his son was having difficulty adjusting to life in the USA. Yahye is now around 25 years old. Last we heard, he had been in foster care and moved to Minneapolis to live with his Aunt. At that time, he had planned to enter the Army after graduation.
