Haunting story behind tragic photo of middle-class Aussie teen seen plunging from jet’s wheels
THIS ghostly photo captures the moment a teen stowaway who dreamed of seeing the world plunged to his death from a plane.
Travel fanatic Keith Sapsford was only 14 when he tucked himself inside the wheel well of a Japan-bound flight from Sydney Airport in February 1970.
He had run away from his family home in Australia as he wanted nothing more than to travel – escaping his boarding school and heading straight for the airport.
Keith’s adventure however ended in tragedy as the plane he was stowed away aboard began to take off.
It pulled up its landing gear and the panels that the teenager was hiding on top of opened up – sending him into freefall.
He ended up plunging some 200ft to the ground as the plane was traveling at 180mph.
Keith didn’t survive his fall – but the moment was captured by amateur photographer John Gilpin, 22.
“I didn’t see anything fall…in fact, I know nothing about anyone falling from the plane until I heard people,” he said at the time.
Keith’s family, from Randwick, had recently been on a bumper holiday around the world to try and satisfy the teen’s wanderlust.
But even after their return, Keith had an “urge to move”, his dad Charles later said.
Frustrated by their wannabe globetrotter son, the Sapsfords sent Keith to a strict Catholic boarding school called Boys’ Town, aimed at young men with behavioural issues.
The restless schoolboy lasted only two weeks at the institution before he hatched his plan to sneak away on a jet.
‘URGE TO MOVE’
On February 22 1970, a determined Keith escaped his school and snuck onto the tarmac at Sydney Kingsford Smith Airport.
There, he tucked himself inside the wheel well of a DC-8 plane – an early jetliner capable of carrying more than 200 passengers.
Keith would have hoped to be one of the successful examples of wheel-well stowaways – a practice in which people hide in an aircraft’s undercarriage, to attempt to travel unnoticed.
But the practice carries a high chance of death, with estimates putting its fatality rate at 76 per cent.
Stowaways risk suffering hypothermia or oxygen deprivation during the flight – and many do not even make it into the air, like Keith’s story reveals.
Surviving takeoff as a stowaway is extremely difficult – with plane equipment either crushing the hidden person as the landing gear retracts into the wheel, or flinging them onto the ground below.
Keith’s father had even told him a story from Spain about a stowaway’s death only a year before, hoping to discourage his son from taking the immense risk.
But adventurous Keith, who was wearing only a t-shirt and shorts to attempt the more than 4,000 mile journey, could not be stopped.
He hid for hours in the wheel-well of the Japan Airlines flight to Tokyo, before the DC-8 plane began its take-off.
As it did, it released its latch to stow its wheel – tossing the 14-year-old into a freefall.
HAUNTING SKY DROP
In a ghostly image, Keith can be seen plummeting through the sky, with his legs flailing eerily and his hands stretching into the empty air.
The remarkable moment was captured in a chance shot by amateur photographer John Gilpin.
John, who had been at the airport to snap jets taking off, only discovered the image when developing his film a week later.
In a statement the day after his son’s tragic end, dad Charles said: “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.”
Charles died in October 2015, at the age of 93.