In what could have been a truly disastrous situation, a 13-year-old boy somehow managed to survive a 620-mile trip while hiding in a plane’s landing gear.
The boy, who has not been identified yet, hid in the rear wheel well of a Kam Air passenger as it ventured from Kabul, Afghanistan, to Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport in India. The total journey was around 90 minutes, some 42,000 feet in the air.
As per the BBC, the boy allegedly wanted a trip to Tehran, Iran, when it was actually going to India, about 1,587 miles from his intended destination. After touching down in the wrong country, the boy was clocked by airport staff walking around the runway in his pyjamas. Naturally, he was reported and taken in by the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) for “detailed questioning.”
Credit: Mario Verduzco/Unsplash
CISF said: “Upon inquiry, it turned out that he hid in the rear central landing gear compartment (rear wheel well) of the aircraft. He is from Kunduz city, Afghanistan.
“Subsequently, an aircraft security check was conducted by the airline’s security and engineering staff, during which a small red-coloured audio speaker was found in the rear landing gear area.”
The boy was popped back on the exact same plane for a return trip to Kabul, though this time he was inside the plane and not under its landing gear.
Imagine clinging to life inside an aircraft’s landing gear compartment; frozen at –50°C, starved of oxygen, crushed for space, blacking out in thin air. This 13-year-old Afghan boy attempted to reach Iran, but the plane landed in Delhi instead. He survived this miracle of… pic.twitter.com/qoIDIxxj3Q
— Sapna Madan (@sapnamadan) September 23, 2025
Reacting to the story, one person wrote on Twitter: “Forget booking a ticket…. this kid skipped legroom and went straight for landing gear class.. Glad he survived.”
“Imagine clinging to life inside an aircraft’s landing gear compartment; frozen at –50°C, starved of oxygen, crushed for space, blacking out in thin air. This 13-year-old Afghan boy attempted to reach Iran, but the plane landed in Delhi instead. He survived this miracle of death-defying odds, only to be sent back. Survival was luck, but fate was cruel,” another wrote.
The boy was lucky; deaths associated with plane landing gear are not unheard of
According to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), 132 people attempted to travel in the landing gear compartments of commercial planes between 1947 and 2021 – most of them did not make it due to a combination of lacking oxygen and freezing temperatures. Such attempts have a mortality rate of around 77 per cent.
For reference: There are currently no pictures of the boy, so assume that any you see are AI-generated.
For more like this, like The Tab on Facebook.
Featured image credit: Canva
