Would You Jump to Death From a Plane You Never Even Bought a Ticket For?
The tragic story of a 14-year-old boy, Keith Sapsford, and how he fell from a plane and died.
Hello everyone, your host Vritant this side. I welcome you all to this, yet another issue of White Space, where every week we delve into interesting facets of history and culture. And sometimes, other interesting contemporary stories.
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Now onto the article we go.
I was casually browsing Reddit until something uncanny caught my eye. I wish I had scrolled past that.
It was a black-and-white picture of a person falling from a plane. In the first instance, without reading the title or any text of the post, I thought it was from some 70s or 80s movie. But then I read:
“Keith Spasford, a 14-year-old Australian teen, wanted to explore the world, so he snuck into a plane wheel well, it opened mid-air and the boy fell out. The photographer was just testing his new lenses and was shocked after developing those images.”
God, it was someone’s last moments that accidentally got caught on camera.
Something similar that I read last time was the case of Evelyn McHale. This case is also popularly known as The Most Beautiful Suicide.
She jumped from the 86th floor of the Empire State Building and landed straight on a UN limousine. A photography student who was passing by took a picture of her corpse, and it looks beautiful (to some people). Calm, yes, but beautiful? Take a look for yourself.
Coming back to the present case, why would someone sneak into a plane’s wheel well in the first place? Maybe it was just for fun, or better, to run away.
In 1970, Keith Sapsford, a 14-year-old Australian, found himself in just that set of circumstances when his father sent him to a Roman Catholic Institution called Boys’ Town in Sydney. He decided to run away after just a few weeks.
Keith didn’t intend to return home, figuring he would be sent right back. Instead, he decided to head out of Australia altogether. Keith Sapsford got himself to the Sydney airport after leaving his school. Once he arrived at the airport, Keith snuck onto the tarmac where several planes were located.
One plane, whose destination was Tokyo, Japan, became the vehicle for his escape. The open undercarriage of the Japan Airlines was too tempting to resist, and he climbed inside. It is unclear if he had pre-decided or planned to hop on this plane, but fate had decided something very different from what he might be planning, if he was, in the first place.
Technicians believe the boy, who was dressed only in shorts and a short-sleeved shirt, was unaware that the latch would reopen after take-off to bring the wheel back inside, which is when he fell. Experts later found hand and footprints as well as threads from his clothes in the compartment.
Statistically speaking, this could very well be a case of a passionate wheel-well stowaway who wanted to travel the world. Keith was barely a teenager when he decided to take this unfortunate step.
‘All my son wanted to do was to see the world. He had itchy feet. His determination to see how the rest of the world lives has cost him his life,’ his father, Charles Sapford, said in a reported by Associated Press from February 23, 1970.
According to Wikipedia, wheel-well stowaways are individuals who attempt to travel in the landing gear compartment, also known as the wheel bay or undercarriage of an aircraft.
Between 1947 and June 2015, a U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) researcher had documented 113 such attempts on 101 flights. These 113 people were all male and predominantly under age 30. There were 86 deaths, a 76 per cent fatality rate, with many unidentified decedents.
The early life of Keith Sapsford
Months before Keith stepped out onto that tarmac, events were put into motion that impacted Keith’s decisions and ultimately led him to climb onto that plane’s wheel well. Charles Sapsford, Keith’s father, had told his son about a Spanish boy who had climbed into the undercarriage of a plane, costing him his life.
What he would not have known was that history was about to repeat, and not rhyme. This time, the boy will be his own son.
Keith’s father had hoped to discourage his adventurous son from taking such a risk, but it may have inspired him to hop on a plane to Japan.
Born in 1956, Keith had always been a curious kid who liked to be on the move. His father often used to describe him as a wanderer.
His family had actually just taken a trip overseas to satisfy his adventurous spirit. Unfortunately, he had a habit of running away, and even a long overseas trip was not enough to stop his wanderlust.
But after their return home, Keith Sapsford was restless. His parents decided that some discipline and formalised structure were needed. Boys’ Town, a Roman Catholic educational institution located in the southern portion of Sydney, was seen as the best option for Keith.
This institution specialised in dealing with troubled children, those who needed structure and a formal discipline arrangement. His parents felt it would be the right thing to help him get on the best path.
Keith stows away
Unfortunately, the institution underestimated Keith’s adventurous spirit, and he was able to run away just two weeks after his arrival. It is unclear what made him decide to head to the airport or if Keith even knew the plane’s destination when he climbed into the wheel well.
Regulations at major airports were not as strict as the ones we deal with today, so it is not surprising that a teenager was able to sneak onto the tarmac.
Keith saw a plane (Douglas DC-8) preparing for boarding and took the chance. Unlike that Spanish boy, he figured he could survive because Keith would be in the wheel well and could avoid the dangers of high-altitude exposure.
However, what Keith Sapsford did not consider was that the wheel-well compartment would reopen when the plane’s wheels retracted after takeoff. When that happened, Keith fell 200 feet to his death.
His father believes that the evidence suggests that Keith might have also been crushed by the wheels when they attempted to retract. Either way, the result was a family’s tragic loss of life and heartbreak. That heartbreak would live on for over 40 years before his parents passed away.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Authority published research that shows just one in four airline stowaways survived their illicit flights. Survivors hitch a ride on short trips with low heights, but there are no surviving stowaways on planes that reach cruising altitude.
Ignoring this information and attempting to stow away can be tragic, as the story of Keith Sapsford illustrates.
Pictured the last moments of someone’s life by mistake
Below on the ground, amateur photographer John Gilpin happened to be at the airport. He was taking pictures of events at the airport, hoping one or two would be of good quality. Although he didn’t know it at the time, John would end up capturing Keith Sapsford as he fell to his death.
Keith had already spent several hours in the wheel well before the plane took off. Later, when experts inspected the aircraft, they found handprints, footprints, and threads from the boy’s clothes. They needed all the evidence to prove that Keith had been on the plane.
Even more tragic, had Keith not fallen out of the plane, he would have likely frozen or suffocated to death. The compartment reached freezing temperatures and was not oxygenated.
Keith Sapsford was only in a short-sleeved shirt and shorts, so he had limited protection from the shift in temperature that would occur as the plane reached its cruising altitude. Even the retracting wheels were a threat because there was limited space for him and the wheels when they returned to their compartment.
But surprisingly enough, John didn’t realize what he had captured on film until nearly a week later. Developing his photographs from the day at the airport, John noticed a print with the silhouette of a boy falling feet-first from the plane. His hands were raised up in the air, appearing to be an attempt to cling to something and stop his fall.
The photo remains a chilling reminder of how that child lost his life in a desperate attempt to see the world and escape the structure of his school.
The boy’s father, Mr. Sapsford, died in October 2015 at the age of 93. I don’t know if that relates to this story, but still.
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