Russian teen survives flight in plane's landing gear

MOSCOW - A 17-year-old foster child survived a 50- minute flight hidden in a plane's landing gear in Siberia, Russian investigators said yesterday.

The stowaway crawled into a space above the wheel of the Soviet-built Antonov An-24 turboprop at a Siberian town's airfield Saturday, the Investigative Committee of the General Prosecutor's Office said.

Russian television said he survived the flight to the regional center of Irkutsk in just a light coat, despite temperatures of minus 22 degrees.

Investigators said the youth had fled a foster home, and TV reports said he had robbed a store before climbing inside the plane. He was being treated for frostbite, the reports said.

Earlier this year a 20-year-old Romanian survived a flight from Vienna to London in the landing gear of a Boeing 747. In 2007, a man's body was found near the runway of a Moscow airport. He had fallen when the landing gear was deployed. Just before that, a man from Perm in the Ural Mountains flew into Moscow in a plane's landing gear niche. He survived but was treated for severe hypothermia. - AP