Flight in crate was ‘dumbest thing’
Sept. 10 — A shipping clerk who had himself packed in an air cargo crate and flown from New York to Dallas now says it was “the dumbest thing ... I could ever do within my life.”
CHARLES D. MCKINLEY, 25, was arrested and jailed on unrelated bad-check and traffic charges after his odyssey last weekend. Federal officials are considering additional charges of stowing away on a plane.
He startled his parents — and a deliveryman — when he broke out of the box outside their home Saturday.
“My husband asked him, ‘Man, what are you doing in this crate?’ He said he was coming home,” McKinley’s mother, who declined to provide her name, told KDFW-TV in Dallas.
Before setting out, McKinley filled out shipping instructions saying the crate held a computer and clothes. Authorities believe he had help from at least one co-worker at the warehouse where he works in New York when he loaded himself in the box.
The box was trucked from New York’s Kennedy Airport to Newark, N.J., where it was loaded onto a plane operated by Kitty Hawk Cargo. The plane stopped in Niagara Falls, N.Y., and the carrier’s hub in Fort Wayne, Ind., before going to Dallas, the FBI said.
A driver for Pilot Air Freight saw a pair of eyes in the crate when he went to unload it outside McKinley’s parents’ home in DeSoto, a Dallas suburb. He thought it was a body, but McKinley broke the box open and crawled out, said police Lt. Brian Windham.
McKinley said on Wednesday’s “Today” show that he was already “scared and nervous” when he was nailed into the crate.
“This is the dumbest thing and the craziest thing I could ever do within my life,” he added. “I was short of cash and truthfully I really should’ve waited.”
The crate was carried in a pressurized, heated area, but could just as easily have been placed in the lower, unpressurized holds, said Richard G. Phillips, chief executive of Pilot Air Freight.
“He could easily have died,” Phillips said.
The freight cost — billed to McKinley’s employer — was between $550 and $650, Philipps said. At that rate, “he could have flown first-class,” Phillips said.
McKinley told KXAS-TV in Dallas that he made the trip as cargo because he was homesick and a friend thought he could save money. McKinley said he took no food or water on the 15-hour journey.
Federal officials want to know how the stowaway bypassed airport security. Air cargo receives less federal security attention than passenger planes, in part because of its sheer volume, and critics have suggested that terrorists could use cargo flights as weapons.
“It certainly shows that we have more work to do on cargo security,” Asa Hutchinson, the Homeland Security Department’s undersecretary for transportation security, told ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
http://www.msnbc.com/news/963814.asp?cp1=1
what a dumba$$!
Hybrid Mode
