California Teen Miraculously Lives

California Teen Miraculously Lives

An airplane flight can seem unbearable and uncomfortable, but screaming babies and a bratty kid kicking the back of your chair is nothing compared to the flight a 16 year old boy survived. After a fight with his parents, an unnamed teen stowed away in the wheel of a Boeing 767 and flew five and a half hours from San Jose to Maui. The FBI is calling his survival a “miracle.”

Security footage from the San Jose airport shows the boy climbing a fence to get to Hawaiian Airlines Flight 45 on Sunday morning. FBI officials say that due to temperatures around 80 degrees below zero and a severe lack of oxygen, the teen was unconscious for the majority of the flight.

“He doesn’t even remember the flight,” FBI spokesman Tom Simon told The Associated Press in Honolulu on Sunday night. “It’s amazing he survived.”

After the plane landed, the boy climbed down, and began walking around the airport grounds. It was then that airport personnel discovered him, and notified airport security.

“Our primary concern now is for the well-being of the boy, who is exceptionally lucky to have survived,” Hawaiian Airlines Spokeswoman Alison Croyle said.

The boy was escorted to the hospital by paramedics, and appears unharmed. He is currently in the custody of child protective services, and will not be charged with a crime.

His impromptu flight brings about questions of airport security.

“I have long been concerned about security at our airport perimeters. #Stowaway teen demonstrates vulnerabilities that need to be addressed,” tweeted congressman Eric Swalwell.

This is not the first case of teenage stowaways. In August, an early teenage boy in Nigeria survived a 35 minute trip in the wheel well of a domestic flight after stowing away. Although in these cases both boys survived, others have resulted in death. A 16-year-old Delvonte Tisdale died while stowing away on a flight from North Carolina to Boston in 2010 and an Angola man fell onto a suburban London street in 2012.