Two bodies were discovered in the landing gear of a JetBlue plane that touched down at an airport in South Florida.
The bodies were found in the wheel section of the aircraft as staff conducted a maintenance inspection after it landed at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on Monday night.
Both individuals were pronounced dead at the scene by paramedics, according to the Broward County Sheriff’s Office on Tuesday.
‘This is a heartbreaking situation, and we are committed to working closely with authorities to support their efforts to understand how this occurred,’ stated a JetBlue representative.
‘At this time, the identities of the individuals and the circumstances surrounding how they accessed the aircraft remain under investigation.’
There seemed to be ‘no involvement of the flight crew or operation of the airplane’ in the incident, stated the National Transportation Safety Board, which added that it is not investigating.
It is under investigation by the sheriff’s office crime scene and homicide units. It was not immediately known how the two individuals got the the plane.
Flight 1801 departed John F Kennedy International Airport in New York at 7.49pm on Monday and landed in Fort Lauderdale at 11.10pm, flight tracker data showed.
It happened just a couple weeks after a body was found in the wheel well of United Airlines Flight 202, which traveled from Chicago to Maui’s Kahului Airport. Sources at the time said that the individual who was discovered on Christmas Eve was a man.
There have been several instances recently of people trying to catch rides on airplanes without purchasing tickets.
In November, a Russian woman snuck onto a flight from John F Kennedy International Airport to Paris. She got past security and onto the plane without a boarding pass but was discovered by staff aboard the aircraft and detained when it landed at Charles de Gaulle Airport.
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