Boy, 10, found dead inside Air France plane’s landing gear

A ten-year-old boy has been found dead inside plane landing gear at a Paris airport.

The youngster was a stowaway on an Air France plane from Abidjan in the Ivory Coast to France, it has been reported. 

The plane, a Boeing 777, landed in Paris-Charles de Gaulle shortly after 5pm on Tuesday and the grisly discovery was made by airport staff soon after. 

One report has suggested that the deceased child was a boy.  

Air France expressed its ‘deepest sympathy and compassion for this human tragedy’.

A French police official said the victim was a young African who has not yet been identified and that an investigation is under way. 

French media reported that the victim was a child migrant, though the official said it was too early to determine the victim’s age.

A locator map shows the flight route from Abidjan in the Ivory Coast to Paris Charles de Gaulle airport yesterday 

Air France says an investigation into the death is ongoing.

In a statement, Air France said: ‘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 – a major urban city in the French-speaking west African country – and Paris takes around six hours. 

Such stowaway attempts are extremely rare and nearly impossible to survive, an airline official said. 

Last year, the body of stowaway was found in the garden of a home in Clapham after falling from an aircraft flying from Kenya’s capital Nairobi. 

The man is thought to have frozen to death in the wheel arch of the Kenyan Airways flight before plunging 3,500 feet. 

The man fell from the Kenyan Airlines plane into the back garden of a house in Clapham in July 2019. Pictured: The place where his frozen body landed 

His lifeless body landed just three feet away from Oxford graduate John Baldock, who was sunbathing in his garden in Clapham. 

Kenyan officials said that the escapee was likely to have been a worker at Nairobi airport. 

A stowaway who had desperately clung to a plane as it took off from a West Africa airport was found frozen to death when it landed in Morocco. 

Unable to identify the frozen man, police discovered a bag in the compartment of the plane where he had been hiding, containing trainers, bottles and a marker pen

The Royal Air Maroc flight AT526 had taken off from Conakry, the capital of Guinea, and was bound for Morocco on September 30, with connecting passengers then travelling onto France. 

His limp, lifeless body was discovered a day later by ground staff at Casablanca’s Mohammed V airport.  

The man’s desperate attempt at illegal immigration proved immediately fatal as authorities believe he most likely did not survive the take off from Conakry. Temperatures at high altitude can plummet to as low as -63C (-81F).  

A stowaway who had desperately clung to a plane as it took off from a West Africa airport is believed to have died during the ascent in October last year . His limp, lifeless body was discovered early on Monday morning by on-the-ground staff at Casablanca airport in Mohammed V airport

Of all routes taken by migrants to move around the globe, crossing the Mediterranean is still the most dangerous. 

Although deaths in the Mediterranean have fallen since the peak of the crisis in 2015 and 2016, it remains the most dangerous migrant route in the world.

For the sixth year running, more than 1,000 people have died in the sea, many of their bodies washing up on the coast of North Africa or southern Europe.

The vast majority are presumed to have drowned, although some were killed by hypothermia or dehydration.