Posted on 09/25/2007 4:18:21 PM PDT by George from New England
MOSCOW, September 24 (RIA Novosti) - A 15-year-old boy from the Urals suffered acute frostbite after riding the wing of a Boeing-737 plane on a two-hour flight from Perm to Moscow, Russian radio station Mayak reported on Monday.
After clinging on for the entire 1300-kilometer (808-mile) flight to Vnukova Airport, the boy, named Andrei, collapsed onto the tarmac. His arms and legs were so severely frozen that rescuers were at first unable to remove his coat and shoes, the radio station said.
The airport did not confirm the report. "We have no information on this," the Vnukovo press service told RIA Novosti.
However, Moscow's air and water transport control department said the radio's claim was true. A department spokesman said the incident occurred on Friday, and that the boy's parents were immediately informed, and flew to the capital the same day.
Doctors said it was nothing short of a miracle that Andrei survived the flight, with temperatures hitting minus 50 degrees Celsius (-58 Fahrenheit), the radio station said. The Boeing-737 has a cruising speed of 900 kmh (560 mph).
The boy reportedly made the journey after a commonplace domestic dispute. Angry with his father, who reportedly has a drinking problem, and with his mother for siding with her husband in family rows, Andrei ran away to the neighboring village, where his grandmother lives. On reaching the village, he decided to go on, and hitched a 220-km (137-mile) ride to the regional center, Perm, where he was dropped off at the airport.
It remains unclear how Andrei was able to climb on a plane wing un-noticed, and the Perm Airport security service is being asked some serious questions, the radio station said.
Andrei is now being treated in a Moscow hospital, Radio Mayak said.
560 mile per hour tape ?
Ohl...I see..he hitchhiked 137 miles and THEN got on the plane
Nevermind...
/Litella
What do you hold onto on the wing of a 737 to keep from being sucked/blown off the wing?..... Secondly how do you survive [oxygen - temperature] at the altitudes a 737 normally cruises?....
It still beats going through security.
I stand by my story ... with both legs broken, arms dangling from their sockets and ten seconds away from the lynching time.
Actually this sounds about as believeable as that nut job from Irans statement about gays in his country.
Yep I am raising the Cow Crap Flag on this as well ......:o)
Nope. To be eligible for the DA one must die.
DELTA - Don't Expect Luggage To Arrive.
Maybe he wasn’t ON the wing. Maybe he was IN the wing...like where the landing gear retracts.
They once lost my bag from Cincinnati to Cleveland and my golf bag from Cincinnati to Richmond....no stops!
Norman Cyril Jackson VC (8 April 1919 – 26 March 1994) was a sergeant in the Royal Air Force who won the Victoria Cross during a bombing raid on Schweinfurt in April 1944. Born in Ealing, Jackson joined the RAF Volunteer Reserve in 1939 and originally served as an engine fitter. He retrained as a flight engineer and on July 28, 1943 he joined No. 106 Squadron which operated Avro Lancaster bombers.
Jackson completed his tour of 30 missions on April 24, 1944 but, as he had flown one sortie with a different crew, he chose to fly once more so that his original aircrew finished their tour together. Jackson's 31st mission took place on the night of April 26-27, 1944, when his crew flew in a raid on the German ball bearing factories at Schweinfurt.
Having bombed the target, Jackson's Lancaster was attacked by a German night fighter and a fuel tank in the starboard wing caught fire. Jackson, already wounded from shell splinters, strapped on a parachute and equipped himself with a fire extinguisher before climbing out of the aircraft and onto the fuselage, whilst the aeroplane was flying at 200 mph, in order to put out the fire. His parachute partially opened causing him to slip out onto the wing. As he passed through the fire he sustained serious burns before falling 20,000 feet to the ground with a partially opened and burning parachute.
He suffered further injuries upon landing, but managed to crawl to a nearby German village where he was paraded through the street. He spent 10 months recovering in hospital before being transferred to the Stalag Kc prisoner of war camp. He made two escape attempts, the second of which was successful as he made contact with a unit of the US Third Army.
Did they have to unpry the plane from his cold, dead hands?
Notice they do not say severely frostbitten. They say severely frozen, frozen so solidly apparently they couldn't even bend his arms enough to remove his coat.
Now, I'm not going to say this story is bogus, but if your arms and legs are frozen solid, you're not going to hang onto anything. He would've had to have wedged himself into the flaps or something.
No oxygen needed under 10,000. You can operate for 3 hours at 15,000 with no oxygen. Above that point you need to look for an oxygen mask pretty quickly. The time of useful consciousness at 25,000 is under 20 seconds. The BS meter is absolutely pegged on this story.
Physically impossible.
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