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Flight Stowaway Fined, Gets Year Probation
Wednesday, February 04, 2004
FORT WORTH, Texas — A man who shipped himself in an airline cargo crate from New York to Dallas because he was homesick and didn't want to pay for a plane ticket was fined $1,500 Wednesday and placed on probation for a year.
Charles D. McKinley (search) was also sentenced to four months under house arrest.
McKinley, a 25-year-old shipping clerk at a New York warehouse, pleaded guilty in November to stowing away on a cargo jet and could have gotten a year in prison and a $100,000 fine. He had no comment Wednesday.
The fine was far more than what it would have cost to fly first-class.
U.S. Magistrate Charles Bleil said McKinley committed a crime that was "wrong and stupid," but his intent was to save money, not breach airline security.
McKinley traveled overnight about 1,500 miles by truck, plane and delivery van before popping out of the wooden box Sept. 6, much to his parents' surprise, at their home in DeSoto, a Dallas suburb. The shaken deliveryman called police.
McKinley said he took a cell phone, which did not work, but no food or water. He said he occasionally got out of the 42-by-36-by-15-inch crate. He also said someone else helped him by closing the box and shipping him. The $550 freight charges were billed to his employer.
"This is a young man who made, as the judge said, a foolish, stupid mistake. And he's lucky to be alive," federal prosecutor Fred Schattman said.
The box was carried in the pressurized, heated cabins of the planes but could just as easily have been placed in the lower, unpressurized holds, said Richard G. Phillips, chief executive of Pilot Air Freight. (search
Wednesday, February 04, 2004
FORT WORTH, Texas — A man who shipped himself in an airline cargo crate from New York to Dallas because he was homesick and didn't want to pay for a plane ticket was fined $1,500 Wednesday and placed on probation for a year.
Charles D. McKinley (search) was also sentenced to four months under house arrest.
McKinley, a 25-year-old shipping clerk at a New York warehouse, pleaded guilty in November to stowing away on a cargo jet and could have gotten a year in prison and a $100,000 fine. He had no comment Wednesday.
The fine was far more than what it would have cost to fly first-class.
U.S. Magistrate Charles Bleil said McKinley committed a crime that was "wrong and stupid," but his intent was to save money, not breach airline security.
McKinley traveled overnight about 1,500 miles by truck, plane and delivery van before popping out of the wooden box Sept. 6, much to his parents' surprise, at their home in DeSoto, a Dallas suburb. The shaken deliveryman called police.
McKinley said he took a cell phone, which did not work, but no food or water. He said he occasionally got out of the 42-by-36-by-15-inch crate. He also said someone else helped him by closing the box and shipping him. The $550 freight charges were billed to his employer.
"This is a young man who made, as the judge said, a foolish, stupid mistake. And he's lucky to be alive," federal prosecutor Fred Schattman said.
The box was carried in the pressurized, heated cabins of the planes but could just as easily have been placed in the lower, unpressurized holds, said Richard G. Phillips, chief executive of Pilot Air Freight. (search
