A teenage boy is "lucky" to be alive after surviving hours stowed away in the wheel well of a Hawaiian Airlines jetliner over the weekend, officials and health experts said.
The unidentified 16-year-old boy climbed into the wheel well of the plane before it took off from the San Jose, California airport, FBI spokesman Tom Simon told ABC News.
The teenager passed out and remained inside the well throughout the entire five-hour fight and did not wake up until an hour after it landed at the Maui airport in Hawaii on Sunday morning. He was taken into custody after he was spotted by airport ground crew walking around the tarmac.
The chance of someone surviving inside a commercial plane's wheel well is only 24 percent, according to the Federal Aviation Administration's Civil Aerospace Medical Institute, ABC News reported.
"It's near impossible, almost miraculous, and maybe there's more to the story," Dr. Richard Besser, chief health and medical editor for ABC News, told the station.
Inside the wheel well, the body is exposed to freezing temperatures and almost no oxygen, which the boy somehow endured for 2,300 miles. ABC News aviation consultant John Nance told the station he doesn't see how the teenager survived without a source of oxygen.
"I just don't believe it," Nance said.
One possible way for the body to survive is by falling into a state similar to hibernation, Besser told the station. In that state the boy's heart would have beaten only a few times a minute.
The boy said he ran away from home before sneaking into the airport, Simon told ABC News. Simon also said no federal charges have been brought against him in Hawaii and he is now with state child protective services.
Doctors examined the boy and found no injuries.
"Our primary concern now is for the well-being of the boy, who is exceptionally lucky to have survived," Hawaiian Airlines spokeswoman Alison Croyle told ABC News.
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