Stowaway who survived terrifying travel ‘hanging’ from jumbo jet gets UK asylum

A 30-year-old African stowaway who had ‘miraculously’ survived an eleven-hour British Airways flight by clinging to the wheel arch of the Boeing 747-400 jetliner for 5,639-mile, has now been granted asylum to Britain. The man from South Africa had hidden in the jumbo jet’s undercarriage in the freezing-60 C temperatures in one of the most terrifying air journey. Appearing for the first time on Channel 4’s documentary The Man Who Fell From The Sky, Themba Cabeka opened up about his nerve chilling travel to London’s Heathrow Airport from Johannesburg by hitching a ride, dangling outside the plane with his best friend, who fell to his death from nearly 5,000 ft halfway through the dangerous journey. 

In the show that aired LIVE, the man appeared for the first time, revealing his identity to the world as he spoke about the fateful day of June 18, 2015, when he and his friend Carlito Vale decided to escape the hardship and poverty at their South African campsite, and head to London. As the two men had no funds to buy the plane’s air ticket, they decided to sneak into the wheel arch of the aircraft,  Cabeka, who identified himself with the British name Justin told Channel 4. Hanging outside of the plane the whole time with his friend as it flew several thousand feet from the ground, Cabeka said that he could see the ground from the dangerous height, and could see tiny cars, and small people as he clung to the jumbo jet in the air. 

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As the two men were some miles from London’s international airport, in a tragedy that he described as horrifying, Cabeka’s friend fell from the sky on the ground near the air-con unit of an office block just 6 miles away. As the sight shook him to the core, Cabeka began to pass out. He told Channel 4 that after struggling to keep his grip on the plane, he fainted due to lack of oxygen and frosty temperature.

Spent months in a coma

The last thing, he reportedly remembered was just after the plane took off and his friend Carlito telling him, 'Yeah, we've made it’, the stowaway said in the televised interview. The man had spent months in a coma and after he gained conscience, he spent years in the wheelchair. However, he was then given asylum in Britain by the government and now resided in a one-bedroom flat in Liverpool. Doctors were stunned at the man’s recovery who they had described was in a state of suspended animation and had his organs functioning on standby mode after hanging from the plane for hours. 

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