Stowaway on SIA flight from Kuala Lumpur hides in nose wheel well

A Palestinian stowaway fell out of the nose wheel of a Singapore Airlines (SIA) aircraft that landed at Changi Airport on a flight from Kuala Lumpur, police said on Saturday. Osama RM Shublaq, 27, hid in the nose wheel well on Flight SQ 119 Thursday night. Ground crew in Singapore waiting to serve the twin-engine Boeing 777-200 said he fell about 2.4 metres from the wheel well to the ground. He was immediately arrested by police Osama was charged in a Singapore court on Friday with entering Singapore without a valid pass or permit. If convicted, he could be jailed for up to six months, caned three strokes or more, or fined up to 6,000 Singapore dollars (4,026 US dollars). SIA said the carrier would not comment on a matter under police investigation. Pilots and aviation industry personnel told The Straits times they were amazed that the stowaway survived . "He could have been crushed by the retracting nose wheel, depending on where and how he was positioned," a pilot was quoted as saying. Malaysian authorities were baffled as to how the man could have breached ground security at Kuala Lumpur International Airport and climbed into the cubby hole unnoticed. "You've got to be a superhero to try such a thing," Azharuddin Rahman, a director at Malaysia's Department of Civil Aviation, told the newspaper. It was believed to be the first case involving a stowaway in a wheel at Changi. A 15-year-old Russian boy survived a two-hour flight in Russia three weeks ago by hiding in the wheel well of a Boeing 737 jet. Pilots told the newspaper that the short flight time of about 35 minutes was probably what saved the stowaway. The air in the wheel well is not pressurized or heated, they said. The remainder of the 55-minute journey is ground time. The cruising altitude for such flights is around 23,000 feet with the aircraft spending six minutes at that level while the temperature outside is minus 15 degrees Celsius. The stowaway was said to have been wearing a coat and long pants when he was arrested. dpa ry pr