Mortlake plane stowaway: Did he die before hitting ground?

Police talk to African officials over man who plunged 1000s of feet onto residential street
1/2
Lindsay Watling11 September 2012

Detectives were today liaising with their counterparts in North Africa to solve the mystery of a stowaway immigrant who plunged to his death from the undercarriage of a holiday jet.

The man, in his 30s, fell thousands of feet from the plane as it prepared to land at Heathrow at 7.55am on Sunday.

He was discovered in a tree-lined suburban road in Mortlake on the south bank of the Thames, less than 10 miles from the airport.

A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said: “They will be liaising with them, especially if the guy is actually from North Africa.

“They will be able to assist in trying to identify him, difficult though that may be to do.”

Aviation experts believe the man was probably dead before he hit the ground – either crushed by retracting landing gear or from the extreme cold.

Richard Taylor, of the Civil Aviation Authority, said: “The chances of survival for a stowaway are very slim, particularly in the recess of the landing gear.

“I don’t know of anyone who has survived being stowed away on a long-haul flight.

“When the landing gear comes down at the other end, a few miles from the runway and about 2,000ft in the air, if there is a person who had died they would fall out.”

Residents of Portman Avenue spoke of their shock on finding the man, who suffered multiple injuries, outside their homes just before 8am.

They said his body parts were strewn over a 30-yard area amid pools of blood.

Security guard Billy Watson, 26, who lives opposite where the man fell, described the body as “all twisted up”.

He said: “It is unbelievable. The first thing I thought when I saw the body was that it must have fallen from quite a height.”

Mother-of-two Catherine Lambert added: “We just wonder what made him get in that plane and want so badly to escape.”

Annie Williams, 47, added: “I heard a monstrous bang. I thought someone had been hit by a car. There were two fellows going to church and they said there’s a dead body in the street.”

The discovery comes just over a fortnight after the body of a stowaway was found in the landing gear recess of a British Airways plane arriving at Heathrow from Cape Town.

In 2001, a man fell from a British Airways Boeing 777 during its descent and landed in a Homebase car park in Richmond.

The death is being treated as unexplained. A post-mortem examination will be held in due course.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in