Two bodies found in landing gear of JetBlue plane at US airport
7 January 2025, 19:24
The bodies were located in the wheel well area at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.
Two bodies have been found in the landing gear compartment of a JetBlue aircraft at a US airport, authorities said.
The bodies were located in the wheel well area at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on Monday night, the airline said in a statement to The Associated Press.
They were discovered during a routine post-flight maintenance inspection, JetBlue said.
The aircraft had arrived in Fort Lauderdale shortly after 11pm from John F Kennedy International Airport in New York.
“At this time, the identities of the individuals and the circumstances surrounding how they accessed the aircraft remain under investigation,” JetBlue’s statement said.
“This is a heartbreaking situation, and we are committed to working closely with authorities to support their efforts to understand how this occurred,” the airline added.
Though its most recent flight was from New York to Fort Lauderdale, the jet had been in both Kingston, Jamaica, and Salt Lake City, Utah, earlier on Monday, according to the flight tracking service FlightAware.com.
Authorities have not said where they think the people got into the wheel well.
Both are believed to be men but names and other details were not immediately released on Tuesday.
It appears there was “no involvement of the flight crew or operation of the airplane”, the National Transportation Safety Board said in a statement on Tuesday morning. The agency was not investigating, it said.
It is the second time over the past month that a body has been found in the wheel well of an airplane.
In late December, a body was found in the wheel well of a United Airlines plane after it landed in Maui from Chicago.
The airline industry in recent months has also been dealing with unticketed passengers found in cabins.
In November, a Russian national who did not have a ticket boarded a Paris-bound Delta Air Lines flight in New York and was arrested when the plane touched down in France.
She had somehow bypassed security to board the flight, authorities said.
Then on Christmas Eve, a passenger without a ticket boarded a Delta Air Lines flight from Seattle to Honolulu.
The passenger was discovered while the plane was taxiing for departure, Delta said at the time.
