A child stowaway was found dead Wednesday in the undercarriage of a plane at a Paris airport, officials said , having probably frozen to death or asphyxiated on the flight from Ivory Coast .

The child, aged around 10 , had clambered into the underbelly of the Air France Boeing 777 in Abidjan , Ivory Coast .

It took off on Tuesday evening and landed at Charles de Gaulle airport, north of the capital , early Wednesday morning .

The corpse , not warmly dressed, was found in the plane ’ s undercarriage cavity after landing, in what Air France described as “ a human tragedy ” .

Sources close to the investigation told AFP the boy was about 10 years of age , and that he had “ died either from asphyxiation or from the cold ” .

Temperatures drop to about minus 50 degrees Celsius ( -58 degrees Fahrenheit ) at altitudes of between 9 , 000 and 10, 000 metres at which passenger planes generally fly .

The undercarriage is neither heated nor pressurised .
In recent years , several clandestine passengers , notably adolescents from Africa , have been found frozen to death or crushed in the undercarriage of Western -bound planes .

“ Aside from the human drama , this shows a major failing of security at Abidjan airport, ” an Ivorian security source told AFP , asking how a child, alone, could gain such access .

The last such case in France dates to April 2013 , when the body of a boy, likely a minor , was similarly found in the undercarriage of a plane from Cameroon .

Laure Palun , director of an association helping migrants , told AFP this type of drama was the inevitable result of the “ closure and control of borders ” .

“ It questions the logic of European migratory policy : As soon as there is no route for legal migration , people have to hide to reach the country they wish to go to , and this results in such tragedies . ”

Ivory Coast is a comparatively vibrant economy in Africa with an annual growth of eight percent since 2012 . But illegal immigration to Europe has skyrocketed in recent years.

In 2017 , 8 , 753 migrants aged between 14 and 24 arrived in Italy from Ivory Coast , including 1 , 474 unaccompanied minors , according to the CEVI NGO .

AFP

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