The fingerprints of a man whose frozen body fell into a garden in London from the landing gear of a Kenya Airways plane are being analysed after being sent by British police to Nairobi, where investigators suspect he may have been an airport employee.
A bag, water and some food were discovered in the landing gear compartment after the flight arrived at Heathrow on Sunday. The man’s body was found in a garden in Clapham, south London, shortly before 3.40pm that day.
The director general of the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority, Gilbert Kibe, told the BBC: “Whoever it is most likely had access to the airside because with the way security is tight, it’s unlikely that an outsider would have been able to make his way through to the airside where an aeroplane is parked and be able to climb in.”
“I’m suspecting it’s probably somebody who had access to the airside.”
He added that the captain or first officer would normally walk around the plane and check the undercarriage thoroughly before take-off.
Asked about security concerns the breach raised, he said: “That problem exists globally everywhere, it cannot be isolated to one airport.”
A review of all CCTV coverage on flight KQ100 over the 24 hours before departure has been ongoing, the Kenya Airports Authority (KAA) said on Wednesday. All staff who came into contact with the plane are also being questioned.
“Due to the large amount of data to be analysed, we request for your patience to enable due diligence to be followed,” the KAA said.
A postmortem is due to be carried out on the body, which was said by a neighbour to have landed a metre away from a resident who had been sunbathing.
A plane spotter who had been following the flight on an aircraft tracking app saw the body fall and arrived at the scene in time to give this information to the police.
A neighbour told the Guardian she and her husband had heard a noise but thought at first it was collapsing scaffolding, before they learned what had happened and saw the man’s remains. Via The Guardian