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The two men that plunged to their deaths from an Air France jet as it was preparing to land at Shanghai Pudong International Airport last Friday were actually trying to fly to Germany but stowed away on the wrong plane, according to Turkish media reports.
The mistake may have cost the young men their lives.
According to reports in several Turkish newspapers, the two unnamed men, one 20 the other 19, hailed from Turkey and made a hobby of stowing away in the luggage compartments of airplanes as a cheap way to travel around Europe.
Most of the flights they took lasted only a few hours, but when they jumped on the wrong plane in Paris, they ended up flying at very high altitudes for more than 10 hours.
As aircraft luggage com-partments are not heated or pressurized, it is impossible for humans to fly in them for long periods of time without risking death by exposure or suffocation.
Witnesses who saw the two bodies after they crashed into a small village in Shanghai's suburban Nanhui District said they were clearly suffering from frostbite. Local police still have not said if the men died before they fell from the plane or as a result of their fall.
Shanghai police refused to comment on the reports.
The reports said the two men were crazy about flying, and Turkish police found many aircraft magazines and pictures in their homes in a village in eastern Turkey.
The men reportedly have a police record for sneaking onto planes headed to Cyprus and Germany in the past.
Media reports said one of the men told his family one week before the accident that he was planning to travel to Italy and borrowed US$250 from his parents.
(eastday.com January 30, 2003)
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