"Angry man strips, runs across airport tarmac"

Wednesday, November 3, 2004

Naked bid to fly Down Under

 
LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- A Canadian man, angry that he was
refused a plane ticket to Australia at Los Angeles International Airport,
stripped naked, sprinted across the tarmac and climbed into the wheel well
of a moving jumbo jet, officials said on Wednesday.

Pilots of the Qantas Airways flight stopped the plane. The man was coaxed
out of the wheel well and arrested for trespassing, said airport spokeswoman
Nancy Castles.

"This was an extremely dangerous thing for him to do. If he had continued to
cling in there with the aircraft taking off at over 200 miles (320 kph) per
hour, he might have fallen out and could have been sucked up by an engine,"
she said.

"If he had survived that and was in the wheel well when the landing gear was
retracted, he could have been crushed by the mechanism. And if not he very
likely would have frozen to death during the 15 1/2 hour flight at 30,000
feet (9,150 metres) while wearing no clothes."

The man, Neil Melly, 31, tried to buy a one-way ticket on the Qantas flight
on Monday evening, but was turned down because he could not supply a valid
credit card, Castles said.

Later, he managed to climb over an airport fence, topped by three strands of
barbed wire, without injury and was spotted by a ramp worker "running,
naked, full-speed" toward the plane.

Castles said a check by authorities found that Melly had been reported
missing to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and was suffering from bi-polar
disorder, a manic-depressive illness.


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