By Chantal Da Silva —
NBC News
A man was discovered hiding in the wheel section of a cargo plane at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, on Sunday.
He survived an 11-hour flight,
according to the Dutch military police.
"The man is doing well under the circumstances and has been taken to hospital," the military police, or Marechaussee, said in a statement on Sunday.
Authorities said the stowaway had been found in a wheel of the cargo plane that
had flown in from South Africa.
In a statement to Reuters, Marechaussee spokeswoman Joanna Helmonds said the man's age and nationality had not yet been determined.
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"Our first concern, of course, was his health," he said.
"It's definitely very unusual for someone to have been able to survive the cold at such a height, very, very unusual," he
added.
As of Monday morning, the man's condition was unclear.
NBC News has contacted the Dutch military police for further comment.
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A spokesperson for cargo shipping company Cargolux confirmed the incident, telling NBC News the airline was investigating the matter.
"We are not in a position to comment until the authorities and the airline have completed their investigations," the spokesman said.
The only Cargolux flight arriving at Schiphol on Sunday was a freighter traveling from Johannesburg with a stopover in Nairobi, Kenya, according to online flight tracking platform FlightRadar24.
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Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam did not immediately respond to a request for comment from NBC News.
This flight is not the first in which a stowaway has survived a dangerous journey.
In November, a 26-year-old man was found in the landing gear compartment of a plane at Miami International Airport.
Authorities said he had survived the 2-hour, 37-minute drive from Guatemala.
In March,
a woman with a history of being a "serial stowaway"
who snuck onto flights was detained at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport after police were tipped off that she was wearing an ankle bracelet.
However,
not all stowaways survive.
In January 2020, the body of a stowaway was found in the landing gear of an Air France plane that landed in Paris after a flight from the Ivory Coast in West Africa.
At the time, the airline expressed its "deepest sympathy and compassion for this human tragedy."
