Teen Survives Flight To Hawaii In Jet's Wheel Well, FBI Says

Teen Survives Flight To Hawaii In Jet's Wheel Well, FBI Says(npr.org)

31 points by hablahaha 12 years ago | 13 comments

chrismcb 12 years ago |

Good to know that TSA is keeping our airports safe.... I can't bring a bottle of water into the airport, but apparently anyone can climb a fence and plant a bomb.

pjbrunet 12 years ago |

First, I want to know if he looked this up online before attempting it. Such a sad story (running from home) but makes me wonder if there's more "airborn hobos" out there. My next question is, what was he wearing? Did he have a sleeping bag? Did he really, really want to get to Hawaii? Did he want to get as far as possible from his parents? Or did he simply hide in the first plane he saw after jumping the fence?

jessaustin 12 years ago |

Eh, 50% odds aren't that bad:

http://www.faa.gov/data_research/research/med_humanfacs/oamt...

dalke 12 years ago | |

That's 50% odds for those found at the end. As both your link and the primary link from HN point out, an unknown number of people may have fallen out, eg, into the sea, and not been counted. Your link also points out that some may have been helped at the end by "Good Samaritans" and the success not reported.

jessaustin 12 years ago | | |

The point is, it's not a "miracle", despite unnamed "aviation experts" quoted to that effect.

wavesounds 12 years ago |

I wonder how long someone could survive in this hypothermic state? Days? Months? Years? Decades? Imagine you were terminally ill could you hoist yourself in a weather balloon to 40k feet with an iv of nutrition and float around until they found a cure for your disease? It must be a lot cheaper then cryogenically freezing.

ChrisNorstrom 12 years ago |

WHY IS THIS on the front page of Hacker News? This is a community of Entrepreneurs and Hackers. What is this Reddit now? Flag this crap into oblivion.

Edit: Thanks for the down votes. No I won't back down. I've seen this happen to Digg when it first started then Reddit and now HN. We used to be a community for hackers by hackers and entrepreneurs / aspiring entrepreneurs. Now we're being over-run by a group of info-addicted maniacs who want HN to turn into another time sink. Over the last 2 months I've been taking screenshots of the stupid nonsense that shows up on the front page. The pattern is undeniable. HN is getting more political and more off topic. The same thing that led to the downfall of Digg and Reddit and why we ran to HN to start anew.

Edit: Thank you to everyone who flagged it. It's gone now.

daeken 12 years ago | |

While I personally agree with you that this particular story may not be HN-suitable, the rules are clear on this. 1) If you dislike a story, flag it and move on. Don't comment on its suitability. 2) Don't complain about downvotes -- it's all noise, no signal. 3) What is suitable for HN is "Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity." What that means is that, sometimes, we end up with curious stories like this.

At the end of the day, your best bet for keeping the SNR on the site high is to flag the noise and contribute as much as you can to the signal. Post things that are interesting to you, comment with whatever insight you can give, and don't sweat the small stuff. HN is okay.

falcolas 12 years ago | |

Speaking only for myself: Because it's a fascinating story. It is, simultaneously, a story of extreme security failure, the body's amazing abilities to cope with extreme circumstances, and a story where someone lives to see the end.

Is it about technology or business? Not directly. Is it about an event that we, as technologists or entrepreneurs, might care about? Yes. This makes it worth keeping on HN to me.

marshray 12 years ago | |

And Kayak calls taking two different airlines a "Hacker Fare".

drakaal 12 years ago |

FBI and Homeland Security need this to be a miracle, so Terrorist don't figure out that you could do the same thing with a bomb, and not have to even get on the plane.

saiko-chriskun 12 years ago | |

It is somewhat of a miracle. Flying stowed away on a plane is extremely dangerous and most will die, or at least come out with very serious issues.

jessaustin 12 years ago | | |

Terrorists may not act the way you expect. Some may be perfectly willing to destroy a flight without destroying themselves. For those terrorists, the wheel well may very well come in handy as an unsecured location to stash a bomb that will be protected from the elements.