Rotterdam airport faced a security breach on October 3rd after a passenger managed to board a flight without a valid boarding pass, causing unscheduled landings for two Transavia flights.
The passenger in question pressed the emergency button while at the security check, bringing everything to a standstill and creating confusion for enough time to slip through the security check and board the nearest aircraft they could find.
The plane was a Boeing 737 (HV5023) scheduled to fly to Malaga, Spain. Halfway through the flight, the captain was informed about the unwarranted passenger by the Marechaussee (Netherland police).
The pilot diverted the plane to Madrid to make an unscheduled landing. The passenger was escorted off the flight by Spanish police.
Before taking off to Malaga once more, the crew checked the aircraft for any items that may have been missed during security checks in Rotterdam.
Initially, officials couldn’t be certain which flight the passenger boarded due to the chaos caused by the security breach at Rotterdam.
It was originally assumed that the passenger was onboard flight HV6093 flying to Portugal.
When informed, the flight diverted to Bordeaux, France. It wasn’t until the plane was too far into the landing approach that the crew were given the all-clear that their flight was safe by Rotterdam officials.
The pilot was forced to land the aircraft regardless, which caused a delay in flights.
Stowaways are a rare occasion on flights, however, it’s not completely unheard of. In January, two ground technicians employed by Ethiopian Airlines stowed away on a cargo plane to seek asylum oversea due to the civil unrest in Ethiopia.
The two technicians made their way into the storage quarters of an Airbus A350 which had been converted for cargo purposes. In the storage hold they huddled in the cold for over three hours before landing in Belgium where they successfully claimed asylum.
Again, in January, a man was discovered in the landing gear compartment on a Boeing 747. The flight left from South Africa and landed in Amsterdam with a stopover in Kenya, with the journey taking nearly 12 hours to complete.
He was taken to hospital when he was discovered in the nose section of the aircraft after Miraculously surviving the extremely cold temperatures that his body would have been victim to at such an altitude and length of time.
