Behind The Mic With Joe Mathieu: Another Reason To Question Airport Security

BOSTON (CBS) - The chances of the California teenager surviving the more than 5-hour flight to Hawaii were so slim that some aviation experts thought it was a hoax.

But the security video from San Jose airport apparently tells the tale. And now the 15-year old is part of a very exclusive club.

The FAA says since the 1940's, 105 people have tried to stowaway in landing gear wells like this boy and only 25 of them survived.

The rest were killed by either falling out of the well when the gear came down – as happened to a teenager on a flight from Charlotte to Boston in 2010 – or by the conditions at cruise altitudes.

The oxygen up there is about 20-percent of what we have on the ground and the temperature can drop to 80 degrees below zero.

In this case, there's speculation the teenager's heart rate and brain activity slowed so much that he entered a state of hibernation that may have saved him.

But that's not the real concern today as people find another reason to question security at the airport.

And there have been efforts to prevent this kind of thing.

Congressman Bill Keating (D-MA) has commissioned a study by the federal government to look at airport perimeter security. The last one was back in 2009. Keating also held a field hearing on the matter at Logan Airport.

Some of his colleagues on the House Homeland Security Committee are joining in the request for the study by the GAO.

That's important because this teenager managed to hop a fence with barbed wire before crossing the tarmac and getting into that airplane totally unnoticed.

And you're not the only one thinking about what he could have been carrying and what could have gone wrong on that flight.

Follow Joe on Twitter @joemathieuwbz

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