Fri, Nov 05, 2004
Canadian Stowaway Angered Over Inability To Buy Ticket
Neil Melly was determined to fly to
Australia. So when his credit card ended up shooting blanks at the
ticket counter, the 31-year old Canadian man was not to be
deterred. The very next day, he ran naked onto the tarmac at Los
Angeles International Airport, climbed into the wheel well of a
taxiing Qantas 747 and hunkered down for a long, long flight.
“This was an extremely dangerous thing for him to
do,” said LAX spokeswoman Nancy Castles Wednesday. “If
he had continued to cling in there with the aircraft taking off at
over 200 per hour, he might have fallen out and could have been
sucked up by an engine. If he had survived that and was in the
wheel well when the landing gear was retracted, he could have been
crushed by the mechanism. And if not he very likely would have
frozen to death during the 15 1/2 hour flight at 30,000 feet while
wearing no clothes.”
Details, details.
When the jumbo jet's flight crew realized they had a stowaway,
they simply stopped taxiing. Authorities arrived and talked the
naked man out of the wheel well. He now faces a variety of charges
including trespassing.
Questions remain, however, as to how the quite undressed
Canadian was able to climb the perimeter fence, negotiate three
strands of barbed wire at the top, then run floppity-flop right up
to an aircraft and climb inside the machinery.
A check with the Royal Mounted Canadian Police showed that Melly
had been reported as a missing person. The RCMP also said Melly
suffers from bi-polar disease.
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