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| Special delivery: Stowaway ships self in cargo crate |
| 2003-09-09 |
| Federal agents say they are investigating how a man succeeded in stowing away in a cargo plane on a flight from New York to Dallas by shipping himself in a wooden crate. After hours of traveling, Charles McKinley, 25, of New York City, pried open the crate with a crowbar Saturday morning, authorities said. He popped up outside his parents’ doorstep in suburban DeSoto, shook the hand of a shocked deliveryman and walked away. The deliveryman called DeSoto police, who arrested him on outstanding Texas warrants. McKinley has not been charged with a crime. The FBI and the Transportation Security Administration are investigating. "It’s amazing that the gentleman survived. It’s absolutely a bizarre case," said FBI Special Agent Lori Bailey, a spokeswoman for the Dallas field office. "Our concern at this point is to determine how this was done." Officials said McKinley’s crate was put aboard a pressurized Boeing 727 operated by Indiana-based Kitty Hawk Cargo from Kennedy International to Fort Wayne, Ind. The crate was transferred to a second plane bound for Dallas-Fort Worth International. A ground shipping company picked up the crate and delivered it to the residence of McKinley’s parents. McKinley spent at least half a day in the crate and broke out just in time for the deliveryman to see him, authorities said. Air cargo receives less scrutiny than airline passengers in the heightened security imposed after the September 11 terror attacks. "While this is a very unusual situation, we are fully cooperating with the regulatory agencies, the shipper and other parties handling this investigation," Kim Wiemuth, a spokeswoman for Kitty Hawk Cargo, said in a statement. "Kitty Hawk Cargo followed all current cargo security procedures." If you’re sure that there is no way the servcie could get worse on US airlines, just think of this. |
| Posted by:Frank Martin |
| #4 Tom Ridge must be sooo proud |
| Posted by: Not Mike Moore 2003-9-10 12:42:42 AM |
| #3 I just had five other thoughts - 1) Whats a thing like this cost? I send a little package via Fedex its like 20 bucks. I weigh the same as about 250 of those little packets, so you do the math. Seems like he could have taken a cab for the amount it must have cost. 2) It does seem like a rough ride, but so does seat 12b with two really big people on both sides and a kid with stomach flu sitting behind you. 3) Theres only 2 crewmembers on your average Fed Ex 767 cargo jet and only one on the Cessna carvan, a small plane by comparison, but the cargo bay in the caravan is bigger than my first apartment. Its big enough to do some real damage. Lets hope the pilot/crew at Fed Ex are armed. 4) When they Xray-ed the container he was in, didnt anyone notice that the package contained a grinning idiot skeleton? 5) Seeing as how he got xrayed by a commercial Cargo scanner, does he still plan on having kids? |
| Posted by: Frank Martin 2003-9-9 8:43:44 PM |
| #2 Well, it does suck trying to get somebody to pick you up at the airport. |
| Posted by: tu3031 2003-9-9 8:20:12 PM |
| #1 Reminds me of the Houston construction guy who was effectively held captive by Saudis out in the sticks - and shipped himself out of SA to Amsterdam to escape. The key, of course, is to pick a flight in which the cargo space is pressurized, else you're delivering a slab of frozen dumbass. This twit, with the outstanding warrants, may have opened some eyes at his own expense. Ok, give him some time off his eventual sentence for, uh, um, being caught! |
| Posted by: .com (a.k.a. Abu This!) 2003-9-9 5:04:20 PM |