A 21-year-old Indonesian man survived a nearly two-hour domestic flight to Jakarta after hiding in the plane's wheel well, media reports said Tuesday.
The young man, identified as Mario Stevan Ambarita, jumped the fence of Sultan Syarif Kasim II Airport in Pekanbaru, Riau Province, on Tuesday afternoon, and climbed unobserved into a wheel storage compartment of Flight 177 operated by Garuda Indonesia just before it took off.
At Sukarno-Hatta International Airport in Jakarta, Mario was noticed walking out onto the landing field, wobbling, by an airport ground crew.
"He looked lacking of oxygen. His fingers turned blue, his left ear was bleeding," said Garuda Indonesia Corporate Communication Secretary Pujobroto, who like many Indonesians goes by a single name.
Garuda Indonesia ground crew immediately turned him over to the airport health post for medical treatment.
According to Pujobroto, the maximum cruising altitude of the Garuda Indonesia plane from Pekanbaru to Jakarta was 10,363 meters (34,000 feet), far above the 4,877-meter (16,000-foot) threshold where the temperature outside the flying aircraft drops to the freezing point.
Due to his weakened condition, the motive behind Mario's action was not immediately clear.
Quoting his relatives, however, Pujobroto said that since he was born, Mario lived in Pekanbaru and had been dreaming of going to Jakarta. For the past 10 days, he had observed the Pekanbaru airport. He also learned how to sneak into a plane from the Internet.