Fort Lauderdale, Florida CNN —
Two people were found dead in the wheel well of a JetBlue plane from New York City after it landed at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, the airline said Tuesday. It’s the latest in a string of incidents that have raised concerns over airline security.
The bodies were discovered Monday night during a post-flight maintenance inspection. Their identities are unknown, the airline said, and “the circumstances surrounding how they accessed the aircraft remain under investigation.”
JetBlue said the plane had most recently operated as Flight 1801 from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. The flight landed in Fort Lauderdale at 11:10 pm, according to the flight-tracking website FlightAware.
“A gate technician in the landing gear area noticed two males who appear to be Signal 7, advised they are not moving in the landing gear area,” an unidentified person said on Broward County Sheriff’s Office radio at 11:26 p.m., as recorded on the website Broadcastify. Signal 7 is law enforcement code for a deceased person.
“The individuals who (are) deceased are both males. Beyond that, their identities at this time are unknown,” said Carey Codd, spokesperson for the Broward County Sheriff’s Office.
“The Broward County Medical Examiner’s Office will perform autopsies to determine the causes of death of both individuals,” Codd added.
The bodies were badly decomposed, according to a law enforcement official.
The investigation is not impacting operations at the airport, Broward County Aviation Department spokesperson Arlene Satchell told CNN.
“The passengers who arrived on the flight had already deplaned,” Satchell said.
“This is a heartbreaking situation, and we are committed to working closely with authorities to support their efforts to understand how this occurred,” JetBlue said in a statement.
“TSA is working closely with the airline, airport, FAA, and law enforcement officials and this incident remains under investigation,” a spokesperson for the Transportation Security Administration told CNN in a statement. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates JFK Airport, declined comment on the deaths.
The National Transportation Safety Board told CNN it is not investigating because “it appears that the incident had no involvement of the flight crew or operation of the airplane.” The jet has been returned to the custody of JetBlue.
The Airbus A320 jet was in service nearly all day Monday, according to FlightAware data, first taking off from Kingston, Jamaica, at 1:10 a.m. It arrived in New York ahead of a 7:36 a.m. departure to Salt Lake City. The jet then flew back to JFK before concluding its day in Fort Lauderdale.
The discovery comes two weeks after a body was found in the wheel bay of a United Airlines flight from Chicago to Maui.
The Federal Aviation Administration says the landing gear compartment is often used by stowaways, who don’t realize how little space is available in the bay when the gear is retracted. Stowaways who aren’t crushed often end up losing consciousness for lack of oxygen or freezing once the plane is at cruising altitude.
About 80% of people who attempt to fly in the wheel well or another external compartment of an aircraft die, according to a 2011 FAA report.
There have been other recent stowaway incidents that raised serious alarm over airport security during the busy holiday travel period.
A woman boarded a Delta plane Thanksgiving week, authorities said, and made it from Kennedy to Paris before she was eventually arrested.
Weeks later, a stowaway tried to hitch a ride on a Delta flight departing from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. The unticketed passenger was discovered while the plane was taxiing for takeoff to Honolulu.
“This keeps happening. People are getting onto the airport property and getting into an aircraft, and it poses a huge security danger for the aircraft,” former Department of Transportation Inspector General Mary Schiavo told CNN News Central on Tuesday.
“These people were apparently just trying to get some place, but it could have easily been someone attempting to attack aviation.”
This story has been updated with additional information.
CNN’s Shimon Prokupecz, Pete Muntean, Sara Smart, Alexandra Skores, Javon Huynh, Raja Razek and Forrest Brown contributed to this report.
