Miracle: Afghan Boy Travels to India Inside a Plane's Wheelhouse

Kam Air Plane

Miracle.. Afghan Boy Travels to India Inside a Plane's Wheelhouse

A 13-year-old Afghan boy astonished authorities at Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport on Sunday when he arrived at the airport hidden in a plane's wheelhouse.

In a daring adventure that defies the laws of survival, the Afghan boy managed to reach New Delhi from Kabul on a Kam Air flight, not as a passenger, but as a stowaway hidden in the plane's wheelhouse—a perilous journey undertaken "out of curiosity." According to reports, Kam Air flight RQ-4401 from Kabul landed in New Delhi after a one-and-a-half-hour (90-minute) flight at around 11:10 a.m. on Sunday.

How did he sneak into the plane's wheelhouse?

In aviation, such attempts at air travel are known globally as "wheelbarrowing," where desperate travelers hide inside or under the aircraft's wheelhouse.

These attempts are extremely risky due to the high altitudes, freezing temperatures, and the lack of oxygen at cruising altitude, along with the cramped cabin space. These attempts often end in death, usually due to hypothermia.

As the plane taxied onto the runway at Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi, the airline's chief security officer spotted the child—a native of Kunduz, Afghanistan—walking on the tarmac near the plane and immediately alerted the airport's security operations control center, according to an airport official who requested anonymity. 

The boy was quickly detained and handed over to security agencies, including the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), who interrogated him for several hours in Terminal 3.

He did this out of curiosity.

A CISF official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the boy, who was returned to Kabul later that day, told investigators he had managed to sneak into Kabul airport and climb onto the plane's center rear landing gear before takeoff. The Central Industrial Security Force officer quoted the boy as saying that he "managed to sneak into the airport and into the landing gear undetected," and that he told officials he did so out of curiosity.

However, The Indian Express reported that the boy wanted to travel to Iran and was unaware that the flight he boarded was bound for New Delhi, not Tehran. According to the newspaper, the boy sneaked into Kabul airport, followed a group of passengers, and hid in the tail wheel well of the plane—the interior compartment housing the landing gear. He carried only the red megaphone.

Such attempts are risky, and most end in death, usually due to hypothermia. Experts attribute the boy's survival to a miracle, as planes fly at altitudes between 9,000 and 12,000 meters, where temperatures drop to minus 50 degrees Celsius.

Not Uncommon Cases

Although rare, such cases of infiltration are not uncommon. There have been recent incidents of stowaways on flights bound for the United States or Europe, often fleeing their home countries. However, very few have survived.

Experts say that many stowaways who survive such flights are often unconscious during landing, putting them at risk of falling and dying when the landing gear is lowered. In January 2024, the bodies of two men were found inside the landing gear of a JetBlue Airways flight from the Dominican Republic to Florida.

In December 2023, a young Algerian man was found in critical condition after a flight from Oran to Paris, suffering from severe hypothermia. In 2021, a Guatemalan man survived a flight to Miami after hiding in the wheel well of an airplane for several hours.