I know nothing about what really happened. But this is B.S.
— And it is so bad, I’m going to clip the whole thing because I can only assume that once the Daily Telegraph realizes this is bogus, they’ll pull it. I filed this under “humor” because there is no way to take it seriously… It’s not even internally consistent.
A 15-year-old boy suffered acute frostbite after riding the wing of a Boeing-737 plane on a 1300km two-hour flight.
With temperatures hitting minus 50C (-58 Fahrenheit) and the plane at a cruising speed of 900km/h, the teenager Andrei Shcherbakov collapsed onto the tarmac when the plane landed.
He had clung on for the entire flight from Perm in Russia’s Ural region to Vnukova Airport in Moscow.
His arms and legs were so severely frozen that rescuers were at first unable to remove his coat and shoes.
He was taken by ambulance to hospital where doctors are trying to save his hands.
When he awoke, Andrei told police that he had decided to run away from his alcoholic father and their home in Perm.
He went to his grandmother’s house and had dinner before telling her that he was going to spend the night at his friend’s house, who had a birthday.
Instead, the boy took a taxi and went to the airport.
“I had some money with me. I just wanted to take a look at the planes. I was wandering about the territory of the airport and saw a hole in its fence,” he said.
“I sneaked in and approached a big plane. It was already dark and no-one saw me. I didn’t know what to do next.
“Eventually, I decided to climb up the landing gear into the wing. When I was in, I sat down there on a tyre [tire] and fell asleep.”
The boy said he woke up when the plane was flying.
“I got so scared and fainted. [while he clung on? -ed] I don’t remember what was happening afterwards. They told me later that I had spent about two hours at the height of 10,000 meters at very low temperatures.
Ok at this point I gotta jump in… If he fell asleep on the tire, wouldn’t he wake up when -you know- the tire started to roll and he hit the concrete and the plane rolled over him. — I can believe that he slept thru the gigantic jet engines starting just a few feet from his head… Sure, I’ll give it to you…
But you would think that if he rolled off the tire, hit the ground, got rolled over by the plane and the wheel tossed him up on the wing, (where he clung on for the whole flight) he might have woken up. I’m just guessing.
“I came to my senses again when the plane had already landed. I got down on the runway and collapsed. I could not control my legs and it was very cold,” he said.
Airport workers saw the teenager falling down on the ground from the hull of the plane.
He was taken to hospital in a half-conscience state. When at the hospital, he complained his hands were burning.
Moscow’s air and water transport control department said the boy’s parents were immediately informed when he fell to the runway tarmac and his mother Olga flew to the capital the same day, Saturday.
Mrs Shcherbakov arrived in Moscow and took her son back home to Perm because the family could not afford the expensive hospital treatment.
A doctor from the Perm hospital, where the boy is staying at the moment, said that the tissue of the boy’s hands started dying away, which may make surgeons amputate both hands.
So here’s how I think this story came to be… Some bored Russian reporter got liquored up on Vodka and wrote a tall tale. Then it got to Australia where they ran it thru google translator which missed a bit. The editor looked it, said “Sounds good to me” and it hit the wire.
Honestly, I don’t know how to take reporting this bad seriously.
