A stowaway is recovering in a Dutch hospital this weekend after taking a ride from Nairobi, Kenya, to the Netherlands on the landing gear of an Airbus A330 Freighter.
Authorities found the 16-year-old alive inside the plane and suffering from severe hypothermia, The Telegraph reported. He is currently being treated at a hospital in Maastricht, after making the 5,000-mile journey.
It is not known how the teenager, who is from Kenya, managed to get on the landing gear, but officials said he was lucky to be alive.
While it may seem like a good idea for a free flight, hitching a ride on an aircraft’s landing gear often leads to exposure death. Flights typically spend hours at a bone-chilling 38,000 feet, where oxygen is also scarce.
“He was tremendously lucky to get over it,” a spokesman for Maastricht Aachen Airport told Netherland News Live.