The former lead mechanic for US Airways said the 15-year-old boy who stowed away in the wheel well of a Hawaiian Airlines flight Sunday had a tight fit in the belly of the Boeing 767 and should consider himself "very, very lucky" to be alive.
"I was shocked," said David Supplee, who oversaw maintenance for Boeing 767s and other aircraft for US Airways for 21 years. "Generally, when we read about this type of stuff, the body falls out when the aircraft is on approach. They get up there and may lean against a tire, but when the plane gets high enough, they generally black out from high altitude and the cold, and generally they die. And when the landing gear is extended, they generally fall out of the wheel well."
Supplee said the normal cruising altitude is 35,000 to 38,000 feet for a five-hour flight like the flight from San Jose, Calif., to Kahului in which the teen hid undetected. He said temperatures are at least minus 30 degrees with no way to get warmth.
"That area is open to the elements," he said. "There is no heat in there, nothing to get oxygen in there. There may be some heat coming from the brakes and tires from takeoff, but that dissipates very quickly. There is nothing to provide any kind of warmth. There’s no oxygen to help him sustain life during a five-hour trip."
Supplee said once the two wheels are retracted into the bottom of the plane, the remaining space — primarily in the middle between the right and left landing gear — is about 2 to 3 feet wide, 8 to 10 feet long and 5 to 6 feet high. He said the wheel well sits about six feet off the ground, so it’s likely that the boy climbed up the landing gear to crawl into the wheel well. He said it would be a "tight fit" for one person.
"More than likely he was going to be sitting right in the middle section," said the Kansas City, Mo.-based Supplee, who has been financial officer for District 142 of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers since June 2008. "There is some tubing in there, and there’s some structure that he could maybe try to hold on to."
Supplee, who often worked inside Boeing 767 wheel wells, said the area is primarily aluminum and contains hydraulic tanks, hydraulic pumps and plumbing for the hydraulic fluid to flow through, as well as air ducts and control cables.
"There are a lot of things mounted in that area," he said. "Most of the stuff is pretty well protected so it doesn’t get damaged if something gets thrown up from the tires. It’s not by any means a comfortable spot that you can sit and relax."
Boeing spokesman Doug Alder said the aircraft manufacturer would not provide any details or drawings of the wheel well "so as not to encourage this very dangerous and illegal activity."
Supplee called the boy’s survival "miraculous." Since 1947 only 25 of 105 stowaways have survived, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
"I couldn’t in my life imagine how someone could hold on and stay there for the entire flight," Supplee said. "I just can’t imagine sitting up there as the aircraft is rolling down the runway at 165 miles per hour (during takeoff) and seeing the tires coming up into the wheel well. I would be surprised if he was alert or conscious the majority of the flight. He would have passed out due to lack of oxygen."
Hawaiian’s landing gear typically would be retracted about a mile after takeoff, and the door would close, and then three to five miles prior to landing, the gear would extend, according to Hawaiian spokeswoman Alison Croyle.
"Our primary concern now is for the well-being of the boy, who is exceptionally lucky to have survived," Croyle said.
Hawaiian, which launched its first flight in November 1929, is the oldest U.S. carrier that has never had a fatal accident.
Supplee likened the teen boy’s situation to that of professional golfer Payne Stewart, who died along with four others in October 1999 when their Lear jet lost pressurization after taking off from Florida.
"They took off out of Orlando, lost pressurization very quickly on that airplane and everyone on that airplane died," he said. "The airplane cruised on autopilot (for 1,500 miles) and crashed in South Dakota."
In the Hawaiian Airlines case, though, there was a happier ending.
"He’ll definitely have a story to tell after he explains it to the police, the FBI and everybody else," Supplee said.
