SA-UK flight stowaway in critical state

A SUSPECTED stowaway is being treated in a London hospital after being found unconscious on Thursday on a British Airways flight from Johannesburg after the plane had landed, British police said yesterday.

Police said they had also found the body of a man on the roof of an office under the flight path to Heathrow Airport and were trying to work out if he could have fallen off the same plane.

The man found alive is believed to be 24 years old and police said he was found in the undercarriage of the plane.

“His condition is now described as critical,” the statement said.

A police spokesman said the possibility that the two men were on the same plane was “one of the lines of inquiry”.

The police were called about the suspected stowaway on the flight at 8.28am on Thursday and about the body at 9.35am.

The flight takes 11 hours and outside temperatures during the journey would fall as low as minus 60°C.

A British Airways spokeswoman said: “We are working with the Metropolitan Police and the authorities in Johannesburg to establish the facts surrounding this very rare case.”

The body was found on the roof of the offices of an online retailer in Richmond, southwest London.

“Officers and the London ambulance service attended and found the body of a male on the roof of the premises,” the company said in a statement.

“The death is currently being treated as unexplained but early indications are that the body may be that of an airline stowaway.”

There have been several cases of stowaways being found dead clinging to the landing gear of planes. In 2012, a Mozambican fell from the undercarriage of a Heathrowbound flight from Angola. – AFP