A stowaway fell thousands of feet from a plane on to a quiet suburban street after apparently hiding in the landing gear.

The body of the victim, in his thirties and from North Africa, was discovered in an affluent London neighbourhood under the Heathrow flight path.

Aviation experts say he was probably dead before he hit the ground either because he had been crushed by the retracting landing gear shortly after the plane took off or because of the extreme cold at high altitude.

It is thought the man’s body dropped from the aircraft undercarriage as the plane came in to land.

Residents on the tree-lined road in Mortlake, on the south bank of the Thames less than ten miles from the airport, yesterday spoke of their shock on finding the body after hearing a loud bang.

Billy Watson, 26, a security guard who lives opposite where the man fell, said he saw the body ‘all twisted up’.

He said: ‘It is unbelievable. The first thing I thought when I saw the body was that it must have fallen from quite a height.

‘You could tell by the way his body was mangled. There was a big pool of blood coming from his head.’

Richard Taylor, of the Civil Aviation Authority, said a stowaway in an aircraft undercarriage was unlikely to have survive as he would either be crushed by the wheels after take-off or freeze in temperatures as low as minus 40C .

He said: ‘The chances of survival for a stowaway are very slim, particularly in the recess of the landing gear. I don’t know of anyone who has survived being stowed away on a long-haul flight.

Police said they were investigating whether the body was that of a stowaway.’

The discovery comes just over a fortnight after the body of a stowaway was found in the landing gear recess of a BA plane arriving at Heathrow from Cape Town.

(Read by CJ Henderson. CJ Henderson is a journalist at the China Daily Website.)

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(Agencies)