Body found in nose of United Airlines plane at SFO

(07-19) 11:09 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- San Francisco International Airport personnel this morning discovered the body of a man in the wheel well of a 747 recently arrived from Shanghai, an airport official said.

Airport spokesman Mike McCarron said the body was found during a post-flight inspection of United Airlines flight 858, which landed at 7:42 a.m. after an 11-hour flight.

San Mateo County Sheriff's and Coroner's investigators, along with immigration officials, are investigating the discovery, McCarron said.

Bodies are periodically found in the wheel wells of airplanes, usually after people seek covert entry into the United States or Europe. Such stowaways usually die during the flight.

"There's no air to breathe," McCarron said. "And the cold temperature is probably minus 30, 40 degrees at altitude, so you freeze to death."

That appeared to be the cause of death of a man found in the wheel well of a US Airways flight that landed in San Francisco in 2001. The dead man, later identified as the son of a Zairean general, had fled to Britain before apparently trying to stow away to the United States.

Other stowaways have narrowly survived the flight, including a man who survived a flight from Tahiti to Los Angeles in 2000, arriving with a body temperature of 79 degrees. He was later repatriated to Tahiti, though a Cuban man who rode the wheel of a DC-10 to Montreal in 2002 was granted asylum.

The identity and specific cause of death of the man found in San Francisco this morning has not yet been released.