2 bodies found in landing gear of JetBlue plane at Florida airport: NPR

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Two bodies were found in the cargo hold of the landing gear of a JetBlue plane at a South Florida airport, authorities said.

The bodies were found in the wheel well area Monday evening at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, the airline said in a statement to The Associated Press.

They were discovered during a routine post-flight maintenance inspection, JetBlue said.

The plane had arrived in Fort Lauderdale shortly after 11 p.m. from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport.

“At this time, the identities of the individuals and the circumstances surrounding how they gained access to the aircraft remain under investigation,” JetBlue’s statement said.

“This is a heartbreaking situation and we are committed to working closely with authorities to support their efforts to understand how this happened,” the airline added.

Paramedics pronounced both dead at the scene, the Broward County Sheriff’s Office said Tuesday. The agency’s homicide and crime scene units are investigating, he said. The names of the individuals were not immediately released.

There appeared to be “no involvement of the flight crew or operation of the aircraft,” the National Transportation Safety Board said in a statement Tuesday morning. The agency did not investigate, she said.

This is the second time in the past month that a body has been found in the wheel of a plane. In late December, a body was found in the wheel well of a United Airlines plane after it landed on Maui from Chicago.

In recent months, the airline industry has also been dealing with ticketless passengers found in cabins.

In November, a Russian national without a ticket boarded a Delta Air Lines flight from Paris to New York and was arrested upon landing in France. She had somehow bypassed security to board the flight, authorities said.

Then, on Christmas Eve, a ticketless passenger boarded a Delta Air Lines flight from Seattle to Honolulu. The passenger was discovered as the plane was taxiing for departure, Delta said at the time.