Stowaway froze to death in plane landing gear in attempt to visit girlfriend
A Turkish man died after climbing into the landing gear bay of a British Airways plane to visit his girlfriend in Britain.
Hikmet Komur, 32, froze to death after being exposed to temperatures as low as -60C on the flight in July 2013.
According to the Daily Mirror, he had no money to visit his Portuguese girlfriend Luisa de Silva and crawled into the plane's landing gear in Istanbul.
His body was found by Heathrow Airport staff who discovered him wearing a woolly hat and sock on his hands.
The Daily Mail reports that he had known de Silva for many years and she had visited him in Turkey two months before his death. He had begged her to move to Istanbul but she refused.
Speaking at an inquest she said: "He said he was going to get a visa and come here. Then he sent me a picture of his passport. I knew it was not real."
She added: "I tried to stop him but I couldn't do anything."
Coroner Jeremy Chipperfield recorded an accidental death and said: "It's very likely that he intended to come to the UK by stowing himself in an undercarriage of BA675 from Istanbul.
"It's unclear how he got into that wheel bay but the evidences strongly suggests that it was voluntary."
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