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“Reinhold Messner might be able to survive that high without supplemental oxygen and the appropriate acclimation and clothing, but the person we are talking about here probably wasn’t even conscious, either from the drop in pressure, or the temperature. Most likely dead very quickly”.

IIRC there have been several people who stowed away like this and lived. Maybe they were shorter flights.

I've heard of people surviving, but I think it depends on the aircraft and a couple of other factors (including clothing), especially duration of flight.

Jokes about Messner aside, off the top of my head, I think there has been around 80 or so that the FAA recorded since the mid 1990s (inside and outside of the US), with around a 20% survival rate.

FAA even did a study in the 1990s about it. Four things can kill you - the landing gear on takeoff, hypoxia (due to the change in air pressure), hypothermia, and falling out when the plane is landing. Hypoxia/hypothermia can lead to you falling out, even if you were still alive (albeit unconscious and/or disoriented).

Ironically, the hypothermia might increase your chances of living since it can put you in a deep sleep, reducing your need for oxygen. But we are still talking 80 below zero. Even if the wheels were really warm after takeoff, that heat probably escapes pretty fast. Still have the issue of falling out.

And I think the report acknowledged the fact that people encounter multiple issues ,and it's hard to say what the cause of death is, since the body goes through a lot of trauma. Somebody crushed by a retracting wheel and then dumped from X amount of feet in the air at hundreds of miles an hour looks just as dead as somebody who falls out before the landing, etc.

The people that I've heard of doing this have all seemed really desperate to leave somewhere, but I'd rather take my chances on a crappy little homemade boat leaving from Cuba, than hopping in the wheel well of an aircraft.