Teen Survives Maui Wheel-Well

In 2014, a 16-year-old runaway boy slipped into the landing gear of a jumbo jet in San Jose, California, and hid there for a five-hour flight to Maui, Hawaii. As the plane climbed to around 38,000 feet, he blacked out in the wheel well in temperatures estimated at 75 to 80 degrees below zero, with almost no oxygen. Doctors later said the combination of extreme cold and low oxygen likely pushed his body into a state of suspended animation that slowed his metabolism and kept his organs from failing. Ground crews found him alive on the tarmac in Maui.

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