A 13-year-old boy from Afghanistan shocked airport authorities on Sunday after arriving at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport hiding inside the landing gear of a Kam Air flight from Kabul. The Kam Airlines flight RQ-4401 touched down in Delhi around 11:10 am after a 1.5-hour journey.
The boy, a native of Kunduz, reportedly snuck into Kabul airport and climbed into the rear central landing gear of the aircraft before departure. Such attempts, known globally as “wheel-well stowaways,” are extremely dangerous due to freezing temperatures, oxygen deprivation, and cramped conditions. Most attempts can be fatal, often resulting in hypothermia.
As the aircraft taxied at IGI Airport, airline security personnel spotted the boy walking on the tarmac and immediately alerted the Security Operations Control Centre. He was quickly detained and questioned by the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) at Terminal-3. The boy later told officials he did it “out of curiosity.”
After being processed, he was repatriated to Kabul the same day on a separate flight. Authorities also recovered a red-colored speaker believed to belong to him during a detailed inspection of the aircraft. The plane was cleared of any security concerns afterward.
While rare, incidents of stowaways hiding in landing gear have occurred internationally. In January 2024, two men were found dead in the landing gear of a JetBlue flight from the Dominican Republic to Florida, while in December 2023, an Algerian youth survived a flight from Oran to Paris but suffered severe hypothermia. In 2021, a Guatemalan man survived a flight to Miami under similar circumstances.
This incident has reignited discussions about airport security and the extreme risks undertaken by stowaways attempting such perilous journeys.
