Two Bodies Found in Plane’s Landing Gear at Fort Lauderdale Airport

Two bodies were discovered in the landing gear compartment of a JetBlue plane on Monday after a flight to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., the airline said in a statement on Tuesday.

JetBlue Flight 1801 departed Kennedy Airport in New York at 7:49 p.m. Monday and landed at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport at 11:10 p.m., according to flight tracker data. The bodies were discovered during a routine post-flight maintenance assessment of the plane, the airline said.

Paramedics pronounced the two people dead at the scene, according to the Broward County Sheriff’s Office. It was unclear how long the people had been in the landing gear compartment.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which manages Kennedy Airport, did not immediately respond to a request for comment about how the individuals may have gained access to the aircraft.

Landing gear compartments, located under an aircraft’s wings and at the front of the plane, have long been used by people attempting to travel undetected on airplanes. The airline did not say whether the two people who were found dead on Monday were stowaways.

Such attempts to hide in landing gear compartments have proven deadly in the past. The compartments open and close upon takeoff and landing to deploy and retract wheels and other landing components, and other stowaways have fallen to their deaths from the openings, sometimes landing in public spaces along flight paths.

Those who can stay within the compartment risk being crushed by landing gear when it is withdrawn back into the aircraft, along with other hazards, including severe temperatures, pressure changes and lack of oxygen. Many stowaways die of hypothermia.

As recently as Christmas Day, a body was discovered in a wheel well of a United Airlines flight from Chicago to Hawaii. In 2023, a man was found alive in a landing gear compartment after a commercial flight from Algeria to France, though he was suffering from severe hypothermia.

An investigation was underway on Tuesday to determine the identities of the two individuals discovered in Fort Lauderdale and how they might have accessed the aircraft before it departed from New York, JetBlue said.

“This is a heartbreaking situation, and we are committed to working closely with authorities to support their efforts to understand how this occurred,” the airline said.