The Man Who Fell From The Sky

In 2015, a stowaway fell to his death in London.

He'd been hiding with a friend in the wheel well of a plane.

His death made worldwide headlines,

but his life was a complete mystery.

I set out to discover who he was,

why he had taken on such a perilous journey

and what happened on that plane.

For five years, I searched obsessively for the one man

who could answer all my questions.

The one man who, against all the odds,

had survived the most extreme journey ever made.

I'm Rich Bentley.

I've spent 15 years making documentaries all around the world.

Five years ago, I chanced upon a little-known story of people

trying to come to the UK by the most dangerous means -

clinging to the landing gear of planes.

As the plane flew over this street on approach to landing,

that's the point at which the wheels were lowered and he fell.

As I started to look into it,

I became aware of a chilling phenomenon.

The body was found in a British Airways Boeing 747

which arrived at Gatwick Airport this morning from Nairobi.

He fell to his death as the wheels were lowered

above this west London gasworks.

I couldn't begin to understand what it must be like to cling

to the undercarriage of a plane

or what would force anyone to attempt something so dangerous.

At 18,000 feet,

aviation experts say hypoxia, or oxygen deprivation, sets in.

At 22,000 feet, with no pressurisation,

the lungs have trouble functioning.

It's tough to maintain consciousness.

At 35,000 feet, hypothermia would set in,

as the temperature can drop as low as -81 degrees Fahrenheit.

I learned there have been 109 recorded attempts made

across the world.

And that London is the most common destination, with 16 wheel-well

stowaways in the last 25 years.

There was little information available beyond these grim news

reports, so I met with witnesses to some of these events to see

what else I could find out.

We looked out of the window

and we saw this young black guy laying there.

His head was on the kerb and there was brain matter spread

across the pavement and on some of the cars.

You can imagine the fear,

all of a sudden, realising that the air up there's thin,

freezing, rather like being on top of Mount Everest.

It happened just along here, by this wall here.

And it was in the morning, right?

It was, except it was Sunday, so it's probably a little quieter. OK.

No children going to school, thank goodness.

Well, it isn't the first time we've had people falling

out of airplanes in this area,

because as you can probably see,

the airplanes open their undercarriage around about now.

As soon as I got here and saw the state of the body,

he was mangled, there was a lot of blood splattering.

Some of his brains was on the car over there.

You know, I know, from the number of bodies I've seen,

he had dropped out of the sky.

The most affluent part of London, he lost his life in a car park.

All of these deaths had happened

just a couple of miles away from my home.

And I was surprised I'd never heard about them before, especially

as immigration dominated the news.

Coastguards around the UK are stepping up their searches

in light of reports of migrants trying to sneak into Britain.

3,000 migrants, who have been camped out in Calais, hop on board

those lorries as they attempt to get to Britain.

The electorate are generally not that keen on immigration.

We don't have the housing

or the National Health Service to deal with it.

More than one million refugees

and migrants have entered Europe in 2015.

Amidst the biggest human migration since the Second World War,

hiding in the wheel well of a plane was the most drastic of any journey

that could be made.

To understand how this was possible,

I met with a pilot who knew all too well.

In 1996, Mike Post was landing this very plane

at Heathrow when a stowaway fell from the wheel well.

This was the first death of its kind recorded in the UK.

It was the middle of the night when we took off from Delhi.

On this occasion, we were held for about ten minutes

at the end of the runway.

And that is when, I suspect,

he ran out and got into the wheel well.

I don't even think I can get here, even if I try.

And doing it under speed,

you just can't really imagine it, can you?

Blimey.

Struggling.

I can see the ledge.

Here. Yes.

So, the wheels would have come up and gone into this big space?

Yes.

And what we think, he was lying just here?

That's the only flat spot.

Do you know how long he would have had before the wheel started

to retract, when it left the runway?

It wouldn't be very long because you call for the undercarriage

to come up when there's confirmed positive rate of climb.

Probably a matter of 15, 20 seconds.

I feel jittery just sitting up here. I don't blame you.

The ledge that he would have ended up on, I don't know,

in my head, I thought it was more inside the plane.

Like, you can see the outer skin of the plane, and it's so thin.

In terms of warmth and in terms of oxygen, he's literally...

He may as well be outside. Indeed.

I'm trembling, this is scary. I don't like it. Yes. It's horrible.

No, I think it's terrifying.

There's no light, so far as I'm aware, in there.

So how he found somewhere to lie... In the dark, yeah. ..I have no idea.

And it's so much bigger than I thought.

Like, it's a massive bit of machinery. It's huge.

The hydraulics are so powerful, they've got to lift these wheels up.

Why would you do this to yourself?

There's something really unpleasant about thinking about,

this was the place that he lost his life. Absolutely.

God, the poor boy.

The sheer desperation that must drive someone to stow away

like this painted a bleak picture of a world where

there were no other options.

But what happened next brought this home in a way I could

never have anticipated

and drew me right into the heart of this story.

I've just landed.

I've been on a flight from Turkey,

and as I switch my phone on,

I've discovered that a body has fallen.

A man is believed to have fallen to his death

in the affluent suburb of Richmond, southwest London, after clinging

to a plane all the way from South Africa to Heathrow.

A body believed to be that of a stowaway was found here, on top

of the white ventilation shafts.

He was found in an electrical box on the roof

with his legs pointing upwards in a V.

Well, there's very little known about the victim himself.

He was discovered early this morning, at about 9:30 local time,

on the roof of the building that you see behind me.

But there was another twist.

The man who'd fallen from the sky had not been alone.

A second man remains critically ill in hospital,

the pair thought to have hidden together on the same flight.

Of course, we also don't know the exact condition of the other

person and whether or not police have been able

to talk to him just yet.

Against all the odds, this second man had survived.

Who was he,

how had he got on the plane

and what was going to happen to him now?

I made it my mission to find out.

British Airways says a man fell to his death

after stowing away in the undercarriage of one of its planes.

The plane was travelling

from Johannesburg to London's Heathrow Airport.

Another man, thought to be 24 years old,

is being treated in hospital

after he was found unconscious in the undercarriage.

The miracle man had endured an 11-hour flight,

clinging to the landing gear of a plane.

Of the 109 people known to make such a journey,

only 24 have made it alive.

But no one has ever survived a flight for this long.

Whilst the media was obsessed

with the man who'd fallen from the sky,

I wanted to find the survivor...

..because here was someone who had defied all the odds

and lived to tell the tale.

Hi, can I just run a quick inquiry past you?

I've been researching a case

of a young guy that stowed away on a British Airways flight.

We were hoping to speak to one of the officers

that dealt with the case.

Over the following weeks,

I spoke to every single authority involved with the survivor.

I'm trying to get hold of someone

in the press department for the Johannesburg police.

Have I got the right number?

I'm trying to speak to someone who works within foreign affairs.

Hello, can you hear me?

Just so I understand the process, what would have happened is,

the Met would have responded to the incident

and then essentially handed it over

because it was a sort of closed case.

OK, thanks very much.

Thanks. Bye-bye.

I even met with the Home Office.

But I came up against one brick wall after another.

I was left frustrated.

This was an important story, and I felt it needed to be told.

Whoever this survivor was,

he'd landed in the middle of a storm.

We are approaching one of the biggest decisions

this country will face in our lifetimes...

Is it not time we took back control of our immigration policy?

..whether to remain in a reformed European Union, or to leave.

The choice goes to the heart of the kind of country we want to be.

Immigration had become the political football of the referendum,