By Louis Ibah
Arik Air says it discovered the lifeless body of a suspected stowaway on Wednesday, November 30, 2016 in the main wheel well (the under carriage compartment) of its Airbus 330-200 aircraft at the Oliver Tambo International Airport, Johannesburg.
The aircraft operated the scheduled Lagos-Johannesburg flight that departed the Murtala Muhammed International Airport at 3:55pm on Tuesday, November 29, 2016 and arrived Johannesburg shortly before 11pm.
Engineers of South African Airways Technical facility at the Oliver Tambo International Airport where the aircraft was scheduled for a routine maintenance check discovered the body of the stowaway during inspection phase.
“Investigations are ongoing to determine how the stowaway found his way into the aircraft’s main wheel well,” said Arik Air spokesman, Adebanji Ola. It would be the third incident in the airline’s history of an alleged stowaway found dead in the wheel well of the airline. The last incident was reported in March 2015 when a suspected Nigerian stowaway was yesterday found dead on the the undercarriage compartment of an Arik Air aircraft at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos while Arik Air engineers were checking the aircraft in preparation for a flight from Lagos to Johannesburg. In October, 2012, the lifeless body of a suspected stowaway was similarly found on an Arik’s Lagos-New York flight. In September 2013, a 14-year-old boy, Daniel Oikhena, stowed away in an Arik Air Benin City-Lagos flight. The boy, who hid himself in the tyre compartment, however miraculously survived the flight. According to him, he thought the flight was America-bound from the Benin Airport, and had hoped to achieve his life ambition of a trip to the United States. Stowaway persons usually have the backup of airline officials as they can’t successfully operate in isolation. And for any successful stowaway incident, analysts have always pointed out the inherent danger of such a person being a terrorist with bombs strapped on his body.The spate of stowaway incidences on Arik Air has however raised questions on the airline’s internal security and safety mechanisms as well as those of the various regulatory and security establishments at Nigeria’s airports.