16-year-old boy survives five-hour flight outside plane cabin fleeing home

HAWAII, US: A teenage runaway survived a 3,700km flight to Hawaii hidden in the landing gear of a passenger jet.

The 16-year-old was found by airport workers in Maui after he tumbled out of the wheel well of an Hawaiian Airlines flight from San Jose, California, which landed on Sunday morning.

FBI investigators say the boy was fleeing his home in Santa Clara when he jumped an airport fence and decided to stow away on the Boeing 767.

He apparently had no idea where the plane was headed.

During the five-and-a-hour flight, temperatures outside the plane would have reached around 80 degrees below zero and there would have been very little oxygen.

Tom Simon, an FBI spokesman, said the boy was apparently unconscious for most of the flight and was disoriented when he was discovered on the Maui airport tarmac.

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The boy is now in the custody of child protection agencies in Hawaii but is not believed to be suffering any serious medical problems.

Hawaiian Airlines said in a statement: "Our primary concern now is for the wellbeing of the boy, who is exceptionally lucky to have survived."

Aviation expert Peter Forman told Hawaii News Now it was "extremely unlikely" someone would survive for hours at 38,000feet.

"Within a few minutes up at that altitude, the person would pass out and usually they would not survive for hours on end up there so it just boggles the mind," he said.

"You would suffocate most likely up there. It's extremely unlikely that somebody would survive that long at that altitude. And if they did survive, you would think that they would have frostbite and all sorts of problems associated with the cold up there."

-Mirror