A stowaway fell from a plane as it was landing in London, and it happens with shocking regularity - here's why

Reuters/Ivan Alvarado

A LAN Airlines plane lands at Santiago International Airport, Chile, January 27, 2016.

• The body of a stowaway fell from a plane as it began its descent into London's Heathrow Airport on Sunday, and landed in a private garden.
• Over the last 30 years, bodies of illegal travellers have been found on southwest London high streets and in car parks which lie under Heathrow's busy flight path.
• On a plane the most popular place for stowaways to hide is the "wheel well," where the wheels are stored between take-off and landing.
• Temperatures can drop to -60 degrees Celsius (-76 degrees Fahrenheit) when a plane is at its cruising altitude and oxygen levels are extremely low, meaning most die in mid-air.
• As pilots open the wheel hatch to prepare to land, the frozen-solid bodies of stowaways fall over southwest London.
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A stowaway fell from the undercarriage of a jet as it approached Heathrow Airport on Sunday and landed in the garden of a south London townhouse, an event happens with an alarming frequency.

Desperate asylum seekers often sneak into a plane's "wheel-well" - where landing gear and wheels are stored between take-off and landing - and chance their luck against oxygen levels of 26% of those at sea level and temperatures of -60 degrees Celsius (-76 degrees Fahrenheit).

Most stowaways freeze to death in mid-air, their bodies then falling from the plane when the pilot opens the hatch to deploy wheels for landing.

Heathrow is the UK's busiest airport and hundreds of flights pass over southwest London before touching down each day, meaning dead stowaways often fall in this area, and are found in built-up or public places.

REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

Stowaways often cling to the landing gear (pictured) which is retracted when the plane isn't taking off or landing.

On Sunday, London's Metropolitan police found the body of a man in a garden in Clapham. He had fallen from a Kenya Airways flight from Nairobi to Heathrow. He is the latest in a long line of stowaways to fall.

A long history of stowaway deaths near Heathrow

There is a long history of recorded stowaways hiding on commercial jets. According to a report from the FAA, stowaways were recorded as long ago as 1947, with a 30-year-old man surviving a flight from Lisbon to Natal in Brazil in the wheel-well of a KLM airliner.

Heathrow, however, is a particular hotspot for the phenomenon, with numerous incidents recorded in recent decades.

In 2015, the body of a 24-year-old South African man was found lifeless on the roof of a west London office block.

The unnamed man had attempted to make it to the UK by clinging to the undercarriage of a British Airways flight from Johannesburg to Heathrow, but had passed out and fallen when the hatch was opened.

The 10-hour flight was 8,000 miles long and flight data, cited by the Guardian, put the plane at 427 meters high when it passed over the office block.

The Guardian

The office block in west London where the man's body was found.

At 7:45 a.m. on September 9, 2012, early morning commuters watched in horror as the body of a man plummeted from the sky and crashed into the pavement of Portman Avenue, in the southwest London suburb of East Sheen.

The man had fallen from the landing gear of British Airways Flight 76, which was flying from Luanda, Angola, to Heathrow.

Google Maps

The man was found dead on Portman Avenue, East Sheen.

In 2001, 21-year-old Pakistani native Mohammed Ayaz fell from the sky into the car park of Homebase - a British DIY store - in Richmond, southwest London.

Five years earlier, in October 1996, the body 19-year-old Vijay Saini was found across the road on the site of an under development supermarket.

Saini had snuck onto a British Airways Boeing 747 from Delhi, India, with his brother Pardeep, 23. Pardeep survived the 10-hour ordeal, but it took police three days to find his brother, who had fallen from the wheel-well as the wheels were lowered.

In August 1998, revelers at a pub nearbt called The Marlborough told police they had seen a body fall from a plane into the same Sainsbury's building site. It was never located.

Some stowaways get lucky and make it to Heathrow alive, but it is rare.

In June 2010, a Romanian stowaway survived an 800-mile trip from Vienna to Heathrow on a private Boeing 747 owned by the Dubai royal family.