Naked Man Climbs on to Moving Jet

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

 



Trust a Canadian to keep things interesting

A Canadian man, angry that he was refused a plane ticket to Australia at Los
Angeles Airport, stripped naked, sprinted across the tarmac and climbed into
the wheel well of a moving Qantas 747, officials said on Wednesday.

Pilots of the Qantas Airways flight stopped the plane. The man was coaxed out
of the wheel well and arrested for trespassing, said airport spokeswoman Nancy
Castles.

"This was an extremely dangerous thing for him to do. If he had continued to
cling in there with the aircraft taking off at over 200 miles (320 kph) per
hour, he might have fallen out and could have been sucked up by an engine,"
she said.

"If he had survived that and was in the wheel well when the landing gear was
retracted, he could have been crushed by the mechanism. And if not he very
likely would have frozen to death during the 15 1/2 hour flight at 30,000 feet
(9,150 metres) while wearing no clothes."

The man, Neil Melly, 31, tried to buy a one-way ticket on the Qantas flight on
Monday evening, but was turned down because he could not supply a valid credit
card, Castles said.

Later, he managed to climb over an airport fence, topped by three strands of
barbed wire, without injury and was spotted by a ramp worker "running, naked,
full-speed" toward the plane.

Castles said a check by authorities found that Melly had been reported missing
to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and was suffering from bi-polar disorder,
a manic-depressive illness

[Index of Archives]         [NTSB]     [NASA KSC]     [Yosemite]     [Steve's Art]     [Deep Creek Hot Springs]     [NTSB]     [STB]     [Share Photos]     [Yosemite Campsites]