Boy Survives 800-Mile Flight Hanging Onto Plane Wing

Posted by Mike Richard on September 25, 2007
Filed under: Odds + Ends, Sidelines

Like what you see? Subscribe to the full RSS feed.

Via Rian.ru:

MOSCOW - A 15-year-old boy from the Urals suffered acute frostbite after riding the wing of a Boeing-737 plane on a two-hour flight from Perm to Moscow, Russian radio station Mayak reported on Monday.

After clinging on for the entire 1300-kilometer (808-mile) flight to Vnukova Airport, the boy, named Andrei, collapsed onto the tarmac. His arms and legs were so severely frozen that rescuers were at first unable to remove his coat and shoes, the radio station said.

… Moscow’s air and water transport control department said the radio’s claim was true.

This sounds like a hoax to me. Is this even humanly possible? Even if you were wearing expedition clothing like that of Everest mountaineers, wouldn’t the sudden jolt in altitude be enough to induce fatal altitude sickness?

If you liked this post, subscribe to our full feed RSS. You can also subscribe by email and have new posts delivered directly to your inbox daily.



Vagabondish editor, Mike Richard, lives in Rhode Island - a spit of land in the northeastern U.S. He is a professional web designer and travel junkie with an unhealthy addiction to backpacking, camping, hiking and seeing the world. He enjoys knit hats, small, declarative sentences and speaking in the third person.



Like This Post? You Might Also Like:

Our Sponsors

Comments

Dan
September 25th, 2007 - 7:40 pm

I’ve heard a story exactly the same before, well almost, I think it happened in the 50s which would have been a prop aircraft so probably more survivable. I have a feeling this is just a hoax rehash of that story.


Mike
September 27th, 2007 - 2:53 pm

Yeah, seems to be, Dan. I’ve read differing reports now - some saying he was in the wheel well, some saying it’s crap altogether.

Who knows …