Two people found dead in plane’s landing gear area following New York City flight to Florida

Two people have been found dead inside the landing gear of a JetBlue plane that flew from New York City to Florida. Photo / Christopher Ebdon

Two people have been found dead in the landing gear compartment of a passenger plane after it flew from New York to Florida on Monday night.

According to Flight Radar, JetBlue Flight 1801 left Kennedy Airport in New York on Monday evening and landed at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport at 11.10pm.

The bodies were discovered inside the landing gear compartment during a routine post-flight maintenance assessment on the plane, the airline said.

According to the Broward County Sheriff’s Office, the two people were pronounced dead at the scene by paramedics upon arrival.

“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’s spokesperson said.

It is not yet clear how long the people had been in the landing gear compartment before their death and an investigation is under way to determine how the two people accessed that part of the plane prior to the flight.

It is not clear whether they were stowaways.

The landing gear compartment is located under the plane’s wings at the front of the plane and is commonly used for people to travel undetected.

However, previous attempts to hide in the landing gear have proved deadly.

The landing gear compartment opens and closes during takeoff and landing where the wheels retract, and stowaways are often crushed to death when it’s withdrawn.

People hiding in landing gear are also exposed to severe temperatures, lack of oxygen and pressure changes.

Those that don’t accidentally fall to their death can often die of hypothermia.

The deaths come just weeks after a body was found in the wheel of a United Airlines plane following a flight from Chicago to Hawaii on Christmas Day.

In 2023, a man was lucky to be alive after he was found alive in the landing gear compartment following a flight from Algeria to France.