Body Found Hanging From Plane on Arrival

(JFK Airport, New York) Unfortunately, this type of casualty happens with regularity.

From 7Online.com:

South African Airways Flight 203, from Dakar to JFK, landed at the airport just after 7:00 a.m. after descending slowly over Nassau County.

When the plane taxied on Runway 22R, airport workers noticed a portion of a body hanging out of the landing gear wheel well.

They believe the victim was a stowaway whose body decomposed on the trip to JFK Airport, and the victim has not been identified.

Additionally, when the landing gear was lowered on descent, body parts fell from the sky onto a roof in a neighboring community. No information is provided concerning the degree of decomposition which would help in determining how long the person had been dead.

It's understandable that a person would die in the wheel well from lack of oxygen when the plane climbs to cruising altitude, but it seems odd that the body would decompose so rapidly. Typically, the flight couldn't have been much longer than a half day and most of the time the wheel well would be at the extremely low temperatures associated with high altitudes. A body doesn't decompose rapidly at low temperatures.

Consequently, it appears that the body had been in the wheel well of the plane long before today's flight to JFK. The body most likely was molderin' on the tarmac at several stops of the plane before arriving at JFK. To determine who the person was and where he first crawled into the wheel well, the authorities are going to have to review the flights of the plane for at least the last three days.

Companion post at Conservative Thinking.