On a quiet Sunday morning, September 28, 2025, maintenance crews at Charlotte Douglas International Airport in North Carolina made a grim discovery: the body of a stowaway inside the landing gear compartment of an American Airlines flight that had just arrived from Europe. The unsettling find was made shortly after 9 a.m. local time, as workers serviced the aircraft on Hangar Road within the airport division, according to statements from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department (CMPD) and airport authorities.
Police officers from CMPD's Airport Division responded to the scene and pronounced the individual dead on arrival. Homicide detectives, along with crime scene search teams and medical personnel, quickly joined the investigation, gathering evidence and beginning the process of determining the circumstances that led to this tragic event. The Mecklenburg County Medical Examiner’s Office was tasked with conducting an autopsy, though as of Sunday evening, no information regarding the identity of the deceased or the specific European city of origin for the flight had been released. The case remains active and ongoing, with authorities urging anyone with information to contact the CMPD Homicide Unit or leave an anonymous tip through Charlotte Crime Stoppers, as reported by NPR and Fox News Digital.
American Airlines acknowledged the incident in a statement to several news outlets, including CBS News and ABC News, saying, “We are working with law enforcement on its investigation.” The airline confirmed that a deceased individual had been discovered inside one of the main landing gear compartments and directed further inquiries to local law enforcement. A spokesperson for Charlotte Douglas International Airport expressed the airport’s sorrow, stating, “We are deeply saddened by this news and will support the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department’s (CMPD) investigation as needed.” Despite the shock and sadness, airport operations continued as normal throughout Sunday, according to ABC News.
While the details surrounding the stowaway’s journey remain unclear, the incident has drawn renewed attention to the extreme and often fatal risks associated with hiding in a commercial airplane’s wheel well. According to aviation analyst John Nance, speaking to ABC News, “A human body exposed for many hours to temperatures as low as minus 60 degrees Fahrenheit courts extensive frostbite and loss of limbs, even if the utter lack of oxygen at 35,000 feet or more doesn’t result in brain death.” Nance emphasized that while there have been rare cases of survival, such outcomes are “almost unheard of,” and the dangers to both the stowaway and the aircraft’s occupants are far too great to ignore.
The phenomenon of stowaways attempting to travel in the wheel wells of aircraft is rare, but not unprecedented. Data from the Flight Safety Foundation and research from Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, and the Federal Aviation Administration suggest that survival in these circumstances is exceedingly unlikely. The wheel well is a cramped compartment beneath the plane where the landing gear retracts during flight. Temperatures can plummet to minus 60 degrees Fahrenheit or lower at cruising altitude, and the oxygen levels are so low that hypoxia and loss of consciousness are almost certain. Even if a stowaway survives the initial ascent, the combined effects of cold and lack of air are usually fatal before the plane lands.
Yet, as The New York Times and NPR have reported, there have been a handful of extraordinary survivals. In 2022, a Kenyan man survived a flight from Johannesburg to Amsterdam by hiding in the front wheel well of a cargo plane. In 2021, a man endured a flight from Guatemala to Miami in the landing gear compartment. Perhaps most famously, in 2014, a California teenager survived a five-and-a-half-hour flight from San Jose to Maui in the wheel well of a commercial aircraft. Experts believe these survivors benefited from a rare combination of factors: heat generated in the wheel well during takeoff, rapid loss of consciousness that reduced oxygen demand, and hypothermia that slowed metabolic processes enough to prevent death before landing.
However, such cases are the outliers. More commonly, stowaway attempts end in tragedy. This year alone, the Charlotte incident marks at least the second time stowaways have been found dead in landing gear at U.S. airports. In January 2025, two bodies were discovered in the wheel well of a JetBlue plane at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, and another case that same month involved two bodies found in the landing gear of a JetBlue aircraft that landed in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, as reported by CBS News and NPR. In December 2024, a body was found in the wheel well of a United Airlines flight that landed in Hawaii after flying from Chicago.
Just last week, a 13-year-old boy miraculously survived a 90-minute Kam Air flight from Kabul to Delhi after slipping into the plane’s landing gear compartment out of curiosity. The boy was repatriated to Afghanistan and told authorities he had wandered into the compartment without fully understanding the risks. His survival, though remarkable, is a stark exception to the rule. As aviation experts and law enforcement officials repeatedly warn, the overwhelming majority of stowaway attempts in aircraft wheel wells end in death, not just from the cold and lack of oxygen, but also from the risk of falling during takeoff or landing.
Back in Charlotte, the investigation into Sunday’s incident continues. Homicide detectives are working to establish how the individual managed to access the aircraft, whether they boarded before the flight left Europe or at some point during its journey. The lack of immediate information about the stowaway’s identity and the flight’s point of origin underscores the challenges authorities face in piecing together the story. International flights involve complex security protocols, but as this case and others have shown, determined individuals sometimes find ways to breach them—often with fatal consequences.
Airport and airline officials have reiterated their commitment to safety and cooperation with law enforcement as the investigation unfolds. “We are deeply saddened by this news and will support CMPD’s investigation as needed,” the Charlotte airport spokesperson told Fox News Digital. American Airlines echoed this sentiment, emphasizing their ongoing work with authorities.
As the community and the broader aviation industry reflect on this latest tragedy, the incident serves as a somber reminder of the desperate risks some individuals are willing to take in pursuit of a new life or escape from hardship. For now, the unanswered questions linger, and investigators remain focused on uncovering the truth behind the stowaway’s final journey.
