Jet stowaway survives

[barbara]

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...04-22-20-04-56


This kid was lucky to survive the trip.

[JJIII]

Originally Posted by barbara

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...04-22-20-04-56


This kid was lucky to survive the trip.

Something about the story has my "Spidey-Sense" on alert. The altitude and the temperatures involved should have made survival near impossible. I heard someone on the radio Tuesday say that perhaps the extreme cold is what made it possible, but what are the odds of him warming up and waking up in the relatively short time it takes a passenger plane to come from cruising altitude to landing?

[JJIII]

I saw this over at the Mother Ship.

http://www.faa.gov/data_research/res...ent/wheelwell/

[Tom Joad]

The link doesn't work anymore.

How much altitude are we talking about?

Experienced mountaineers call anything over 26.000 feet "The Death Zone"

The effects of high altitude on humans are considerable. The percentage saturation of hemoglobin with oxygen determines the content of oxygen in our blood. After the human body reaches around 2,100 m (7,000 feet) above sea level, the saturation of oxyhemoglobin begins to plummet.[1] However, the human body has both short-term and long-term adaptations to altitude that allow it to partially compensate for the lack of oxygen. Athletes use these adaptations to help their performance. There is a limit to the level of adaptation; mountaineers refer to the altitudes above 8,000 metres (26,000 ft) as the "death zone", where no human body can acclimatize.

[JJIII]

I think I saw somewhere 38,000ft mentioned.

Here is one account...

http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/21/us/hawaii-plane-stowaway/

[Tom Joad]

Strange things sometimes happen.

Here's another unlikely, but well documented instance of survival.

http://www.today.com/id/45046446/ns/.../#.U1pvlFcqSDA

[barbara]

Originally Posted by Tom Joad

Strange things sometimes happen.



Here's another unlikely, but well documented instance of survival.



http://www.today.com/id/45046446/ns/.../#.U1pvlFcqSDA

I've read that book. It was good.