Authorities have launched an investigation after two dead bodies were found on a plane shortly after it landed at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in Florida.
The JetBlue flight had taken off from JFK airport in New York on Monday (January 6), and landed in Florida that evening.
According to FlightAware.com, the flight took off shortly before 8pm local time and arrived in Florida at 11:10pm, approximately 28 minutes later than scheduled.
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After the plane was on the ground at the airport, two bodies were found inside the landing gear of the aircraft.
News of the discovery was confirmed by a spokesperson for JetBlue, who said in a statement: "On Monday evening, January 6, at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport (FLHIA), two individuals were found in the landing gear compartment of one of our aircraft during the routine post-flight maintenance inspection. Tragically, both individuals were deceased."
The names of the two people found on the plane have not yet been confirmed, with the spokesperson saying that their identities and the circumstances surrounding how they ended up in the landing gear of the plane are still under investigation.
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"This is a heartbreaking situation, and we are committed to working closely with authorities to support their efforts to understand how this occurred," the spokesperson added.
Images from the scene shared by Florida news reporter Alex Browning showed a Broward County Sheriff's van outside the airport in the wake of the incident.
According to CBS News, a medical examiner also joined sheriff's deputies at the scene, which was centered around the airport's Terminal 3 - the terminal home to JetBlue.
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News of the two dead bodies in Florida comes after another deceased person was found in the landing gear of a United Airlines flight just last month.
The plane had had flown out of Chicago and landed in Hawaii on Christmas Eve, after which officials found a body in the 'wheel well of the main landing gears'.
"The wheel well was only accessible from outside of the aircraft," United Airlines said in a statement, while a spokesperson for the Maui Police Department told Hawaii News Now authorities had launched an investigation to determine how the person had come to be inside the compartment.
Maui police said no additional information about the United Airlines discovery was immediately available.
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UNILAD has contacted Broward County Sheriff's Office and JetBlue for comment and updates on the most recent case.
Emily Brown