The body of a stowaway who fell into the garden of a suburban London house from a jet as it passed overhead narrowly missed the homeowner, neighbours said.
Police and airline officials say the man fell from the landing gear of the plane as it approached London’s Heathrow Airport after a nine-hour flight from Nairobi, Kenya.
The Metropolitan Police force confirmed the body of an unidentified man was found in a south London garden on Sunday, and it’s believed he fell from a plane.
He has not yet been identified and his age is also not known as this stage, authorities said.
A bag, water and food were discovered in the plane’s landing-gear compartment.
The corpse of the unnamed man was found in the residential property in Clapham, south London, at around 3.30pm, police said.
Neighbours told today how the resident was enjoying the warm weather in his back garden of their £2.3 million home when the body hit the ground just feet away.
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The man was thought to have fallen from the landing gear of the Kenya Airways flight from Nairobi to Heathrow Airport
The body was discovered in the garden of a £2.3m home in Offerton Road in Clapham south London on Sunday
Flight KQ 100 snaked through south London as it headed towards Heathrow Airport. The man is believed to have fallen from the plane as it passed over Offerton Road in Clapham
One told MailOnline: ‘I was pottering around in the kitchen yesterday afternoon when there was an almighty bang.
‘At first I thought it was some scaffolding falling down and thought nothing more about it.
‘My husband decided to see what was going on and went upstairs to take a look.
‘He didn’t tell me what had happened at first. He was obviously quite shocked and went out into the street where my neighbour was standing on the phone to the police.
‘He was really shaken up. He’d been in the garden when it happened and the body must have landed so close to where he was.
‘My husband came back in and I asked him what was going on and he said ”haven’t you seen the man? – the man who fell from the sky?”
‘I wondered what he was talking about and went up to see for myself and there in the middle of the lawn was a body of a man.’
Kenya Airways said today that police traced the body to its Nairobi-London flight.
Flight data shows the jet had descended to 3,575ft (over half a mile) as it began preparing to land and was travelling at around 200mph at around 3.36pm yesterday when it passed over Offerton Road.
It left Jomo Kenyatta International Airport at 9.19am local time and arrived at 3.50pm BST.
The garden where the man landed is a short distance from Clapham Common where families were soaking up the sun as Britain was hit by a heatwave over the weekend.
The unidentified stowaway was found in the garden of a home in Offerton Road in Clapham, south London. The street is seen here in this aerial image
The stowaway was in the landing gear of a flight bound from Nairobi to Heathrow Airport (pictured in a file image) in west London
The neighbour added that the stowaway was fully clothed and ‘badly twisted’ when he was discovered in a ‘dent in the grass’.
She told MailOnline: ‘He was fully clothed, wearing jeans and a blue shirt I believe.
‘The body was in tact as far as I could see. Whether that was because he was frozen, I don’t know.
‘He looked to be lying facing up but his neck was quite badly twisted. Next to him was a dent in the grass which must have been the point of impact.
‘I made sure none of my boys were looking, Luckily they weren’t really aware of what was going on.
‘The police arrived quite quickly. There were a lot of them.
‘The body stayed where it was until about 7.30pm when it was moved by the Coroners Office.
‘The day before there was a children’s party so it could have been even worse.
‘My heart goes out to my neighbour and also to the poor victim. It’s so out of the ordinary and certainly not what you’d like expect in a quiet suburban London street.’
The airline called the death ‘unfortunate’ and said it was cooperating with British and Kenyan authorities.
A post-mortem examination will be carried out in due course and police said officers are working to establish the man’s identity.
A crime scene was put in place but has since been closed by the Met.
The unnamed man fell from the landing gear of a jet as it passed over south London. Pictured are Kenya Airways planes parked at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport near Nairobi (file image)
Neighbours in Offerton Road told how the man landed just feet from a man enjoying the warm weather in his garden
The death is not being treated as suspicious, police said, and the instigation is continuing.
Police believe the man was a stowaway and had fallen from under the aircraft of the inbound Kenya Airways flight to Heathrow Airport in west London.
Officers tracked the flight radar to KQ Flight 100 where the man’s possessions were found in the rear left wheel well.
The 4,250-mile trip from Nairobi to Heathrow takes around eight hours and 50 minutes, according to the airline.
Kenya Airways also told local media the Kenya High Commission has already been contacted.
The statement read: ‘The incident has been treated as a sudden death and is now a police matter. The police have already been in contact with the Kenya High Commission to help identify and name the person.
‘The 6,840km flight takes 8hrs 50mins. It is unfortunate that a person has lost his life by stowing aboard one of our aircraft and we express our condolences.
‘Kenya Airways is working closely with the relevant authorities in Nairobi and London as they fully investigate this case.’
Flight data shows the Kenya Airways jet descended to 3,575ft as it began preparing to land and was travelling at around 200mph when it passed over south London
Authorities traced the jet back to a Nairobi to Heathrow (pictured) flight. An investigation is ongoing but the death is not being treated as suspicious by police
The aircraft has already been cleared to take-off again after being inspected at Heathrow and no damage was reported, according to Kenyan outlet Citizen Digital.
Though not common, stowaways have in the past plunged to the streets of London as planes lowered their landing gear.
In September 2012, Jose Matada from Mozambique, died after falling from the undercarriage of a Heathrow-bound flight from Angola.
The 30-year-old was discovered on top of the offices of NotOnTheHighStreet.com on Kew Road in Richmond, south-west London.
Stowaways hiding in the wheel wells often freeze to death as the plane climbs to a high altitude that can hit minus 56C or die from a lack of oxygen and fall from the craft as it comes in to land.
In August 2012, the body of a man was found in the landing gear of a Boeing 747 after it landed on a flight from Cape Town, South Africa.
The following month, the body of a man from Mozambique fell from a British Airways plane flying into Heathrow from Luanda, Angola.
In July 2013, a stowaway was found frozen to death in the undercarriage of another BA jet following a flight from Istanbul to Heathrow.
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