Students stow away on flight from Medan

JAKARTA (JP): Two high school students were found unconscious at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport yesterday after stowing away aboard a Garuda Indonesia aircraft from Medan, North Sumatra, police said.

The two, identified as Iswadi Simatupang, 17, and Manto Manurung, 16, were found unconscious in the front wheel cavity of the A-300-B4 aircraft of flight GA 151.

Iswadi also suffered fractured bones in his right hand and Manto burned one of his legs. Both were sent to the airport clinic for medical treatment.

An airport official, who asked not to be named, denied the police's statement, saying that the two students were in good condition.

He said a medical examination showed that neither of them had suffered severe injuries.

"The two, who were classmates at a state-run senior high school in Deli Serdang, confessed that they only wanted to know what it was like to fly by airplane," a police officer said.

The airport official, however, said that the two students stowed away because they wanted to run away to Jakarta.

"They are just naughty boys who wanted to run away from home. They also claimed that they planned it with two other friends," he said.

Police said the two teenagers sneaked into Polonia Airport in Medan late Monday and avoided security patrols by hiding in the dry water-channel.

A source at the airport said the teenagers were thought to have climbed into the aircraft from the wheel cavity at around 3 a.m. yesterday.

The aircraft took off from Polonia airport at around 7 a.m. carrying nearly 150 passengers, apart the two boys, and landed at Soekarno Hatta at 10:30 a.m.

The ground mechanics found the boys by spotting the two students' legs in the cavity and helped them out of it.

Police said it took 15 minutes to extricate one of the two adventurers from the cavity, while rescuing the other one took an hour. Police refused to give details of the rescue.

The airport official said the two had suffered from suffocation, especially when the aircraft was at 29,000 feet.

The authorities are still investigating whether any other students stowed away aboard other planes. (41/cst)