The men hid between the wheels of the Boeing 777 before it took off from Havana on Sunday but died of hypothermia before the plane touched down in London.
Police pieced together details of the stowaway attempt after the body of one of the Cubans fell onto a Surrey farm as the the plane prepared to land at London's Gatwick airport. The other was discovered when it dropped out of the undercarriage and onto the runway as the same jet took off for a flight to Cacun, Mexico, on Monday.
"We think, tragically, there was every chance they both died on the journey from Cuba to Gatwick because of the extreme cold and high altitude," a Surrey police spokesman said. "It is a tragedy that these men were so desperate to make a new life that they risked their lives by getting into the undercarriage of a plane."
Police sources said the frozen bodies became detached from the undercarriage as they thawed with the aircraft's descent. Neither man appeared to be carrying any identification, but one of them had Cuban currency, police said.
British Airways said its maintenance crews always check the undercarriage of a plane before it was cleared for take-off, but a stowaway could still hide in the darkness of the wheel housing unit. So far only one stowaway who hid between the wheels to enter Britain is known to have survived
In 1996 two Indians hid in the undercarriage of a DC-9 before it took off from India for a 10-hour flight to London. As the plane approached London's Heathrow airport, a body was seen to fall and was found three days later. The surviving stowaway, a brother to the dead man, was allowed to stay in Britain on compassionate grounds.
Another man who clung to the undercarriage of a plane as it left Paris fell and died recently as the aircraft prepared to land at Gatwick.
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