A plane operated by Russian-based charter airline I-Fly completed seven flights before maintenance workers finally noticed a dead stowaway in the wheel well, the Aviation Herald is reporting.
The industry watchdog reports that after an otherwise uneventful flight from Rimini, Italy, to Moscow, Russia, maintenance workers found bloodstains on one of the main landing gear struts. After inspecting the wheel well, the crew found the remains of a male carrying a Georgian passport, who was later identified as 22-year-old Giorgio Abduladze. An autopsy revealed the man, who was wearing only a T-shirt and shorts, had frozen to death four days prior to being found, during which the aircraft had completed at least seven flights.
“Apparently the man died from exposure to cold; we suspect that he was a stowaway,” a spokesperson for the investigation told RT.com.
Experts are fiercely debating whether or not maintenance crews should have noticed the body sooner. Some say the inner gear doors only get opened during a weekly check. Either way, sneaking into the undercarriage of a plane comes with an extremely low survival rate. In fact, a recent BBC article noted that from 1947 until September 2012, there were 96 known stowaway attempts that resulted in 73 deaths.
Airplane manufacturer Airbus has been cooking up another innovation: a “smart bag” that allows travelers to check in and track their luggage from their phone.
The tech-infused piece of luggage, Bag2Go, contains sensors and an RFID chip that communicates with airlines systems – including check-in and security – and relays the information to an iPhone app. For packing and check-in purposes, the luggage will be able to automatically weigh the contents of suitcases, and users will be able to track their bag as it makes its way onto the plane. It will also alert travelers if their baggage has been opened, saving travelers the trouble of getting caught in a baggage theft scam, like the one in Italy earlier this year that ended in nearly 50 arrests.
The bag is still in the development stages, but in a promotional video Airbus is saying travelers will either be able to buy a Bag2Go suitcase or rent them trip-by-trip. Although the baggage doesn’t seem to help solve the mystery of what to do if your luggage accidentally gets sent to Timbuktu, we’re glad it’ll save us from milling around baggage carousels as we impatiently wait for our suitcase to materialize.
I’m traveling in Sicily this week, and was reminded how crummy the aptly named Continental breakfast can be in this part of Europe: a cup of coffee (the only time of day it is socially acceptable to have a cappuccino, incidentally) and a roll or small pastry. While I’m not a person who starts every day with steak, eggs and a short stack, the Italian “breakfast” makes me yearn for an English fry-up, or the protein-heavy array of cheeses in Turkey and Russia. The good news (for me, at least) is that in Sicily in the summer, it is customary to have gelato for breakfast. An ideal scoop of a nutty flavor like pistachio, tucked inside a slightly sweet brioche, makes for a quite satisfying breakfast sandwich. Ice cream is a thing we tend to eat more of on vacation, and it’s always fun to try local flavors and variations. You know, in the name of cultural research.
Today’s Photo of the Day by Flickr user AlphaTangoBravo shows an ice cream cart in Guatemala. Guatemalans love to add strawberry syrup to their ice cream, and carts are found year-round in Antigua, but sensitive stomachs should be warned: the street cart stuff is likely to cause worse than an ice cream headache.
Share your travel food photos in the Gadling Flickr pool (Creative Commons, please) and you might see it as a future Photo of the Day.
Ciao from Sicily, Europe’s largest island and Italy‘s southernmost land mass. I’m here with my husband and toddler for a last hurrah of sorts before my baby turns 2 and we have to start paying for her airline seat. We started in Catania and will be making our way south to Siracusa and Noto, where we’ll rent a farmhouse for a week near the beach (next week we return home from Palermo). You can follow along vicariously (eating gelato for breakfast is strongly suggested here) with me on Instagram, as I’ll be taking the helm of the @GadlingTravel account this week and sharing photos of plenty of piazzi and pizza. A presto!
Costa Concordia grounded off the coast of Italy in January 2012, where the cruise ship still sits today. Removal of the ship is a well-defined work in progress, now over halfway complete. Placing blame for the grounding, which resulted in the death of 32 people, is also coming into focus. Last week, Italian maritime authorities released a 176-page official report that documents much of what we already knew and verifies some suspicions.
Captain Francesco Schettino, 53, is blamed for causing the accident and delaying the evacuation. He is charged with manslaughter and abandoning ship. The report verifies that Schettino was in command of the vessel when it hit rocks off the coast of Tuscany.
OK, Maybe I Did Not Fall Into A Life Boat
Initially, Schettino had said that he “tripped and fell into a life boat,” rather than abandoning his ship. It was a claim he stuck to for months, vowing to clear his name.
“Soon I will reveal the shocking truth,” said Schettino in our report Captain Of Wrecked Cruise Ship Cries Foul, Says He’s Innocent. “And then all those people who denigrated me will have to apologize, not to me but to the families of the victims and to the public, which was conned with false information.”
That apology probably won’t be coming any time soon. According to the report, Schettino boarded a lifeboat leaving 300 passengers on board and was on land while 80 people were still on the ship, fighting for their lives.
The Captain Is Responsible, Like It Or Not
The report also highlights some serious communication problems, tagging Schettino for blame. One of he most serious: the Italian Coast Guard was not advised of the grounding by the ship, finding out only after being advised by a passenger’s mother.
Other elements of the incident, directly attributable to Schettino:
The grounding happened by sailing too fast and too close to shore
Delayed sounding the general alarm
Unauthorized people on the bridge were distracting him
Failed to consult large scale maps, causing him to use the wrong landmark on the island of Giglio to turn the ship
Minimized the seriousness of the accident to the coast guard
At one point in the aftermath of the Costa Concordia grounding, Schettino insisted that he saved thousands of lives by steering the ship toward shore where it eventually grounded. According to the detailed report, that would not have been possible as the ship’s rudder was not working at the time.
Other officers on Costa Concordia at the time have alleged blame too, mainly for allowing Schettino to make misleading “everything is just fine” announcements to passengers. His business-as-usual attitude apparently caused crew members to lose valuable time performing emergency duties.
Schettino denies the charges, but in May it was decided that there was enough evidence to try him for manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning ship while 4,200 passengers and crew were still aboard.
On the bright side, cruise travel has never been safer.