Highest altitude survived by a stowaway in an aircraft wheel well

Gabriel Pacheco, a 35-year-old Cuban man, was discovered in the nose wheel well of an Air Panama Boeing 707 cargo plane when it landed in Miami after a 2.5-hour flight from Panama on 14 November 1986. The aircraft had reached an altitude of 39,000 ft (11,900 m), the highest that a wheel-well stowaway has ever survived. Mr Pacheco had crawled into a pressurized electronics compartment behind the wheel well. Although temperatures at this altitude reach as low as -63°C, heat from the electronic equipment may have aided his survival. As of January 2014, there have been 103 attempts to stow away in aircraft wheel wells, of which only 24 have been successful. Causes of death include freezing temperatures, oxygen starvation, nitrogen gas embolism, decompression sickness and simply falling from the wheel well when the aircraft lowers its undercarriage to land.