After their son died while a stowaway on a US Airways flight, a North Carolina family is preparing to file a wrongful death lawsuit.
In 2010, 16-year-old Delvonte Tisdale of Charlotte, North Carolina, ran away from home and went to the Charlotte Douglas International Airport. Authorities have no idea how he passed security or gained access to a plane, but he then snuck into the wheel well of a commercial airline headed to Logan Airport in Boston.
Experts believe that the boy probably lost consciousness during the flight (in which oxygen levels drop and temperatures can plummet to 20 below zero) and then fell from the plane when the landing gear went down in the minutes before landing. His body was found in Milton, Massachusetts, battered from the fall from the plane.
According to the Federal Aviation Administration, 86 people have attempted similar stowaway attempts on airplanes. Only 17 have survived.