Stowaway
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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A stowaway is a person who secretly boards a vehicle, such as an aircraft, bus, ship, cargo truck or train, to travel without paying and without being detected.
Stowaways face dangerous situations. Since they are not legally on board, they must sometimes spend days without water or food when traveling by ship, risking death. A much greater risk of death is taken when trying to board an aircraft. Usually, a stowaway tries to jump into an aircraft by hanging on to the airliner's landing gear as the plane takes off, and the force of the wind can easily make a stowaway fall to his or her death. Because people flying on aircraft as stowaways must stay within the landing gear area, they face other risks, such as being crushed in a confined space when the gears retract, falling when the plane is landing, or dying from the heat produced by the engines of the aircraft. Deaths from hypothermia, caused by the extreme cold at high altitudes, or anoxia (lack of oxygen) are also possible and probable.
