Indonesian stowaway hides in plane's wheel well to hitch free flight to 'dream city' Jakarta

A 21-year-old Indonesian man who crawled into a plane's wheel well and took a free flight to Jakarta barely survived the journey, enduring freezing temperatures at an altitude of 10,000 metres.

The young man, identified as Mario Stevan Ambarita, was able to sneak into the wheel storage compartment of Garuda Indonesia's Jakarta-bound Flight 177 just before it took off from Riau province, reports said yesterday.

His motive was unclear. But Garuda Indonesia quoted his relatives as saying that Ambarita, who lived in Pekanbaru (the capital city of Riau) all his life, had dreamed of going to Jakarta.

For the past 10 days, Ambarita had watched the Sultan Syarif Kasim II Airport's goings-on in Pekanbaru. He also learned how to sneak into a plane by researching on the internet.

He hopped the security fence on Tuesday, climbing unobserved into the wheel well.

Ambarita's caper was discovered when he emerged, wobbling and bleeding, on the tarmac after the two-hour domestic flight spanning about 1,300 kilometres.