Stowaway falls to his death.

The body of a suspected stowaway who fell to his death from a Kenya Airways plane landed next to a man sunbathing in his garden in south-west London, a neighbor said. Police believe the victim fell into the property in Clapham from the landing gear compartment of a plane heading to Heathrow Airport. A neighbor told the Press Association news agency that he heard a "whomp" when the body hit the ground on Sunday afternoon, and went upstairs to look out of a window. "At first I thought it was a tramp asleep in the garden. He had all of his clothes on and everything," the neighbour, who asked not to be named, was quoted as saying. "One of the reasons his body was so intact was because his body was an ice block." "I had a closer look and saw there was blood all over the walls of the garden… His head was not in a good way. I realized immediately that he had fallen," the neighbour said. Desperate asylum seekers sometimes sneak into a plane’s wheel well, where landing gear and wheels are stored between takeoff and landing. In doing so, they chance their luck against oxygen levels that are about 75% lower than at sea level and temperatures as low as minus 60 degrees Celsius, or minus 76 Fahrenheit. Most stowaways freeze to death in midair, their bodies then falling from the plane when the pilot opens the hatch to deploy wheels for landing. Heathrow is the UK’s busiest airport, and hundreds of flights pass over southwest London before touching down there each day, meaning any stowaways’ bodies are likely to fall in the area.  There is a long recorded history of stowaways hiding on commercial jets. A report from the US Federal Aviation Administration cited New York Times coverage of stowaways as far back as 1947, when a 30-year-old man survived a flight from Lisbon, Portugal, to Natal, Brazil, in the wheel well of a KLM airliner. Heathrow, however, is a particular hot spot for the phenomenon, with numerous incidents recorded in recent decades.

In 2015, the body of a 24-year-old South African man was found lifeless on the roof of a west London office block. The unnamed man had attempted to make it to the UK by clinging to the undercarriage of a British Airways flight from Johannesburg to Heathrow but had passed out and fallen when the hatch was opened.  A Kenya Airways spokesman told BBC News that the 4,250-mile flight from Nairobi to London takes almost nine hours.  "It is unfortunate that a person has lost his life by stowing aboard one of our aircraft and we express our condolences," the airline said. "Kenya Airways is working closely with the relevant authorities in Nairobi and London as they fully investigate this case."