Russian stowaway survives flight in landing gear
By Associated Press
Nov 2, 2010 5:42 AM CDT

A 17-year-old foster child survived a 50-minute flight hidden in a plane's landing gear in Siberia, Russian investigators said Tuesday.

The stowaway crawled into a space above the wheel of the Soviet-built Antonov An-24 turboprop at a small Siberian town's airfield on Saturday, said a statement issued by the Investigative Committee of the General Prosecutor's Office.

Russian television said he survived the 50-minute flight to the regional center of Irkutsk in just a light coat, despite temperatures of minus 30 degrees Celsius (minus 22 Fahrenheit). Investigators said the stowaway had fled a foster home, and the TV reports said he had robbed a nearby store before climbing inside the plane.

He was being treated for frost bite, the reports said.

Earlier this year a 20-year-old Romanian man survived a flight from Vienna to London in the landing gear of a Boeing 747. In 2007, the body of a man was found near the runway of a Moscow airport. Officials said he had fallen when the landing gear was deployed.

Just before that incident a young man from the city of Perm in Russia's Ural Mountains flew into Moscow in another plane's landing gear niche. He survived the flight but was hospitalized with severe hypothermia.