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A man is understood to have smuggled into the plane's undercarriage before take-off from Morocco
13:57, 18 Jun 2026 Updated 14:36, 18 Jun 2026
A man's body was found in the landing gear of a plane on arrival to Gatwick Airport in London.
The stowaway is understood to have smuggled into the jet's undercarriage before the Air Arabia Maroc plane took off from Tangier in Morocco .
His body was found on Tuesday, June 16, when the plane landed in the UK around 11.30am.
A source told The Sun : "It’s a tragedy. The cargo team unloading the plane had a horrible shock. Everyone is devastated that anyone would feel so desperate they would risk their life in this way.
"There are major security concerns regarding how anyone was able to bypass security in Morocco."
The Casablanca-based airline said in a statement that the incident was identified upon arrival at Gatwick. The flight in question was the 3O102 from Tangier to London Gatwick. The airline said all the relevant authorities were "immediately notified".
The statement read: "Our thoughts are with everyone affected by this incident. We remain in close coordination with the relevant authorities with regards to the investigation."
Sussex Police also confirmed the body of a man was found in the undercarriage of an aircraft at Gatwick and that the incident is being investigated, with a file prepared for the coroner.
A London Gatwick spokesperson added: "London Gatwick’s emergency services attended an Air Arabia aircraft just after 11.30am on June 16 when an incident was identified upon arrival.
"As Sussex Police confirmed, a body was found and our teams subsequently supported Sussex Police and the coroner. Our thoughts are with everyone affected."
This isn't the first incident of the kind to take place in the UK. In 2019, a stowaway fell from a Kenya Airways plane's landing gear on approach to Heathrow.
They landed "one metre" from a sunbather in a garden and pronounced dead. Jose Matada, 30 and from Mozambique, died in September 2012 after he fell from the undercarriage of a flight approaching Heathrow from Angola after surviving temperatures as low as -60C for most of the 12-hour flight.
However, by the time he hit the ground, he was "dead or nearly dead", an inquest was told.
A South African man incredibly managed to survive in 2015 by clinging to the landing gear on the same plane from Johannesburg.
A man on the same flight landed on a shop in Richmond in south-west London after travelling in the undercarriage of the plane.
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After take-off, the landing gear retracts into the wheel wells, which poses a significant risk of crushing the stowaway.
If the person somehow manages to escape physical injury, they still face hypothermia and hypoxia due to the low temperatures and atmospheric pressure.
Hearing damage is also a possibility due to prolonged exposure to dangerously high levels outside the cabin.
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