Stowaway Story, con't

Information is trickling in.  CNN is reporting..

..he was trying to get to Somalia to see his mother, a law enforcement official told CNN on Tuesday.

No wonder they didn't want to provide more information.  Of course there's no threat because the FBI has already dropped off the investigation, convinced there was no threat despite the unbelievable story and ties to Somalia.  They may be correct, but one has to wonder where he learned the trick. 

Anyway, the central unanswered question continues to be survivability.  Those in the know say he couldn't have survived with limited oxygen and temperatures near -80 Fahrenheit (correction to the earlier post, they were using Fahrenheit not Celsius, which most high altitude weather charts use.  -80F is plausible).  But is it really that cold where the rider was stashed?  Here's a picture of the underbelly of a Boeing 767, notice the main gear cavities:

It folds into the underbelly, not the wing.  So our Somali stowaway was likely stashed in a small compartment basically under the passenger cabin and beside the baggage compartment, where animals are often transported.  Residual heat would surely be present in such a confined area and with heat from the main gear tires as they retract into the bay. 

Further speculation should probably include a realistic estimation of what the internal temperature of the area was where he was riding. It surely wasn't -80F.   


But even if the temp was not Antarctic-like his survival still seems shaky considering the three plus hours at altitudes above 30,000 feet in an unpressurized chamber.  Experts on CNN told us that kind of condition would have killed the passengers on MH370 in minutes--in a warmer cabin.   The rider says he passed out, which makes sense, but his unfrozen raggedy andy body would have had no defense against tumbling down into the gear apparatus as soon as the plane made a left bank. Lying on the gear it would seem plausible to think he would have been ejected downward as the gear was lowered on final approach. But he didn't fall out.  So did he belt himself onto a pole or other structure before passing out? 

Or did he actually find some way to enter the baggage compartment when nobody was looking?  Is that maybe why it took him an hour to exit the plane?   Would the authorities cover that up for some reason?  Or did Allah actually perform a miracle?   Whatever the case, the fact he wasn't cited--at least for trespassing--is perhaps the biggest mystery of all.