Video of Airport Crew's Discovery of Stowaway in Landing Gear Viewed Over 320K Times

A video of airport employees interacting with a stowaway they found hiding in the landing gear of an American Airlines flight Saturday morning at Miami International Airport has been viewed more than 320,000 times on Instagram.

Witnesses said the man, not identified, appeared unharmed after the two-and-a-half hour flight from Guatemala, according to Only in Dade, the local social media account that obtained and posted the video.

The video shows the man sitting on the ground while being watched by the airport employees, as well as the landing gear where he hid. A version was also posted to Only in Dade's Twitter account:

In subsequent videos posted to Only in Dade's Instagram account, crews talk to the man and give him water as he continues to sit on the ground.

Miami-Dade Fire Rescue took the man to a local hospital, according to Greg Chin, a spokesperson for Miami International Airport. He added that the case is being handled by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

In a statement to Newsweek on Monday, an ICE spokesperson confirmed that the man is in the agency's custody at the Broward Transitional Center.

"The individual will be afforded access to all legal processes available to him under the laws of the United States," the statement said.

"We received this video and spoke to the person that took it, he was very scared and it is unbelievable that someone would survive this," Dan Vasquez, who works at Only in Dade, told USA Today.

He added: "Can you imagine that kind of wind pressure?"

When the American Airlines flight landed at the airport at just after 10 a.m., the plane was met by "law enforcement due to a security issue," the airline said in a statement to Newsweek.

The airline is working with law enforcement in the investigation, the statement said.

Social media users expressed surprise and relief that the man was able to survive the flight—which flew at 33,000 feet for much of its duration, according to airplane tracking service FlightAware.

"Thank God he's okay and didn't freeze to death or suffocate," wrote Twitter user @30kmillionMIA.

"This is a miracle," wrote Instagram user @marlex_23. "Crazy how he is alive. Desperate ppl do desperate things."

Although the man survived the flight, many other stowaways who have hidden in airplanes' landing gears have died during the journey.

In January, a stowaway believed to be about 10 years old died on a flight into Paris from Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, after hiding in the airplane's landing gear. In 2019, a man hiding in the landing gear on a plane flying from Nairobi, Kenya to London died after he fell from the wheel well into a garden.

Conditions in landing gears can be extremely dangerous for people, and temperatures can drop to -81 Fahrenheit, which can cause hypothermia.

Newsweek reached out to the Miami-Dade Police Department for comment Saturday afternoon but had not heard back by publication. This story will be updated with any response.

Updated 11/29/21, 3:14 p.m. ET: This article was updated with a statement from ICE.