Dead body of child found inside plane's landing gear

A dead body of a 10-year-old child was recovered inside the landing gear of a Boeing 777 aircraft of Air France travelled from Ivory Coast’s Abidjan to Paris, foreign media reported.

The child’s body was recovered at local time at 5:00 pm on Tuesday in the undercarriage of the plane which landed in Paris. One report has suggested that the deceased child was a boy, Mirror.co.uk reported.

Air France confirmed the incident in a statement and expressed its condolences. The airline has also opened an investigation into the death.

The statement read, “Air France confirms that the lifeless body of a stowaway was discovered in the well of the landing gear of the aircraft performing flight AF703 connecting Abidjan (ABJ) to Paris-Charles de Gaulle on January 7, 2020.”

The journey between Abidjan and Paris takes around six hours.

The report said that the instances of stowaways hiding in the interior of commercial jetliners are extremely rare as sub-zero temperatures inside the aircraft are likely to cause exposure and death within minutes of take-off.

Last year, the body of a stowaway was found in the garden of a home near Heathrow Airport after falling from a plane flying from Kenya’s capital Nairobi.

He landed just inches away from a man who had been sunbathing in his garden in Clapham.

The man has not yet been identified but some reports suggest that man was an airport cleaner named Paul Manyasi. He was found with just a rucksack, a pair of trainers, two bottles of drink and a few other small items.