Flight 448 left for Los Angeles at 2:39 p.m. The Seattle worker put in a long day before dozing off in the cargo bay.Īlaska Airlines said in a statement that he was part of a four-person team loading baggage onto the flight and was scheduled to work from 5 a.m. Still, a 15-year-old stowaway survived a flight in a wheel well last year from California to Hawaii. That’s much safer than aircraft wheel wells, where stowaways sometimes hide with no protection from the thin air and extreme cold at high cruising altitudes. In 2005, a bag handler at LaGuardia Airport in New York fell asleep in the belly of a Spirit Airlines plane and woke up in Detroit.Īlaska Airlines said the baggage handler in Monday’s incident was in a pressurized, temperature-controlled part of the cargo hold. He used his cellphone to call the airline during the flight. The 21-year-old said he fell asleep and panicked when he realized the plane was in flight. In 2009, a bag handler for JetBlue flew from New York to Boston in the cargo hold. A passenger heard the man banging on the underside of the floor and alerted a flight attendant. In 2011, a US Airways bag handler was accidentally locked inside the cargo hold of a plane at Reagan National Airport.

Such incidents are rare but have occurred. There was no immediate word on how much the delay cost the airline. It was more than an hour behind schedule when it eventually arrived in Los Angeles, the airline said. The flight carried 170 passengers and six crew members. “How do you have something in the cargo bin that you don’t know is there?” said John Cox, a safety consultant and former airline pilot. Investigators are likely to examine how the worker got left on the plane with luggage that had been screened. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because airline security programs contain sensitive information and are not public documents. aviation official said there is no legal requirement that airline crews check a cargo hold before every flight.

A tale in the desert 2011