A teenager from California miraculously survived a five-hour flight to Maui in Hawaii on Sunday, when he snuck into the wheel well of the aircraft after running away from home.
The 15-year-old boy from Santa Clara jumped the fence at the San Jose airport and climbed inside the wheel of the Hawaiian Airlines flight. Experts say it’s very strange he wasn’t crushed when the wheels went up after takeoff, as the space inside the wheel well is less than the size of the trunk of a car.
Once in flight, the teenager lost consciousness as temperatures plummeted and he was left without oxygen. He regained consciousness landing in Maui and, an hour after landing, stumbled on to the tarmac to the shock of ground crew at the airport.
There is video footage of him jumping the fence at the airport in California and also of him emerging from the craft in Hawaii.
He would have had to hold on to equipment inside the well as the plane landed, in order to avoid falling out as the wheels came down. The whole thing sounds a_bsolutely terrifying_ to us.
A similar incident happened in 2010, when a 16-year-old boy snuck into the wheel well of a plane in North Carolina, but he died when he fell out as the wheels came down for landing in Boston.
Picture: CNN
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.