Two men were found dead inside a wheel well of a JetBlue plane in Florida after it spent the day flying to and from New York City in brutal freezing temperatures, the airline said Tuesday.
The decomposed bodies were discovered inside the landing gear compartment during a routine post-flight inspection at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, a JetBlue spokesperson told The Post.
Two people were found dead inside the landing gear of a JetBlue plane that flew out of New York City on Monday night. NBC6The plane landed there around 11 p.m. Monday from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport — but started the day in Jamaica, where the stowaways are thought to be from, according to the Jamaica Observer.
“A gate technician in the landing gear area noticed two males who appear to be Signal 7, advised they are not moving in the landing gear area,” an unidentified person said on police radio at 11:26 p.m., with Signal 7 police code for a dead person, CNN reported.
JetBlue said it was still investigating “the identities of the individuals and the circumstances surrounding how they accessed the aircraft.”
“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 added.
So far investigators only know that the two dead were men. “Beyond that, their identities at this time are unknown,” said Carey Codd, a spokesperson for the Broward County Sheriff’s Office.
Police are investigating how the people gained access to the aircraft. NBC6“Detectives will investigate and research all aspects of this particular incident, trying to figure out where the flight originated from, where else it had been, the circumstances under which the individuals got onto the plane.”
The Airbus A320 had started the day in Kingston, Jamaica, where it took off just after 1 a.m. for an initial flight to JFK, landing just before 5 a.m. Tuesday, when it was still below 30 degrees.
It left JFK for Salt Lake City, Utah just before 7:30 a.m., before returning to the Big Apple just before 7 p.m., FlightAware tracking shows. It then left JFK again just before 7:30 p.m. before arriving in Fort Lauderdale, where the bodies were found.
Both were badly decomposed, a law enforcement source told CNN.
The Transportation Security Administration is investigating the deaths with help from the airline, FAA and local law enforcement.
The National Transportation Safety Board said it is not part of that investigation because “it appears that the incident had no involvement of the flight crew or operation of the airplane.”
With Post wires.
