Tuesday, October 23, 2007
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family looking at an airplane at Sheremetyevo Airport's Terminal
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Airport security will be improved after two incidents in which teenage stowaways climbed into the wheel wells of passenger planes before takeoff, Moscow police said Tuesday.
"Recently there has been an increase in the number of incidents where people from outside have broken into airport territory," said a source in the city police's air safety department, Interfax reported.
The source did not elaborate.
On Friday, the body of a teenage boy was found in the woods near Domodedovo Airport, southeast of Moscow. Investigators say the boy hid in the wheel well of a plane and fell out as the plane was descending toward Domodedovo. The boy, who was 15 to 17 years old and had Central Asian features, has not been identified. It is unclear where he managed to climb into the plane.
In September, a 15-year-old boy survived a 1,300-kilometer flight from Perm to Moscow while hidden in the wheel well of a Boeing 737. He suffered severe frostbite and had to have four fingers amputated.
Many airplane stowaways freeze to death or are crushed when the wheels retract.
A Public Chamber member also called for improved airport security after the two stowaways. "We don't understand how it is possible to slip unnoticed into these high-security areas," Anatoly Kucherena, head of the chamber's committee overseeing law enforcement, said Tuesday, Interfax reported. "After all, terrorists could have done the exact same thing, and then the consequences would have been much worse."