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The Stowaway Who Fell From the Landing Gear of a Plane and Survived
He battled hypoxia, hypothermia, and broken bones.
In 2015, a man fell to his death in London. He had been hiding in the wheel well of a British Airways 747, en route from Johannesburg, South Africa. Hidden with him was another man. Incredibly, the second stowaway survived the ordeal, although no-one was able to find who he was or where he was living.
A journalist called Rich Bentley decided to take on the story and investigate it further. He wanted to find out what exactly had made two men desperate enough to smuggle themselves onto the undercarriage of a plane and face the risks associated with such a trip.
Bentley rang around several sources to try and find out more about this survivor. Eventually, he was forwarded an email confirming his name: Themba Cabeka. He went back to everyone involved in the case and shared this new-found information with them, to try and get more leads, and found that Cabeka was living in Liverpool, England, in a Home Office accommodation block.
Bentley drove up to Liverpool but was told he wasn’t allowed to enter the building. So he waited outside for six hours, speaking to as many people as he could that were coming and going from the house. Two men reported that they’d never heard of the…
