The Avianca airline and the Colombian Attorney General’s Office said on Saturday that the bodies of two young men, possibly from the Dominican Republic, were found in the undercarriage (landing gear) of an airliner during a maintenance operation in the Colombian capital, Bogotá.
“Upon the plane’s arrival at El Dorado Airport in Bogotá, members of the airline company discovered the bodies of two young men who had stowed away in the landing gear,” reports a local Arabic daily quoring Avianca, adding that the discovery took place on Friday evening.
The company expressed its sympathy with the families of the two people, and added that although it inspected the planes before each flight, the security of airports and restricted areas rests with the authorities.
“The Attorney General’s Technical Investigation Authority is carrying out urgent procedures to determine the nationality of the two dead persons, whose ages range between 15 and 20, and they are of African origin and were found inside the plane,” the Public Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement.
Although no identification documents were found on the two bodies, one of them was carrying money from the Dominican Republic and a bag found with them containing papers from that country.
The office said the findings “indicate that the two may have been on the plane since January 3,” when it was last in the Dominican Republic.
The prosecutor’s office added that the plane’s most recent scheduled maintenance was on December 27, and since then it has flown to Bogotá, Guarulhos near Sao Paulo, Brazil, and Santiago.
The statement added that the two bodies were frozen and partially thawed, and one of them had burn marks.