Toilet getaway folklore question

June 1, 2007 7:28 AM

In his book "Catch me if you Can", Frank Abagnale claims he evaded arrest by removing a panel in the toilet of a VC10, climbing through it and hence escaping out of the (taxi-ing) aircraft through a hatch. Could this actually have been done?
posted by rongorongo to travel & transportation (8 comments total)

From ChasingTheFrog.com

Did Frank really escape a VC10 jetliner by removing the
toilet and climbing down beneath it, eventually escaping through a hatch onto the tarmac?

The event is in Frank's 1981 memoir, but airline experts say it is impossible. "The entire system is sealed," says Skip Jones of the Aerospace Industries Association.

"No matter what happens in there, you can't get into the rest of the airplane." Payload systems engineer Alan Anderson explains that the toilets are mounted on top of tanks that weigh over 100 pounds, and even if he manage to undo the toilet, he would have to crawl through a pipe four inches in diameter. "A person would have to be pretty small, and it would be messy," says Anderson.

posted by dnthomps at 7:34 AM on June 1, 2007

the sealing they are referring to is the pressurized cabin. I will blindly assume that he made it out of the bathroom and into the lower cargo compartment because both are pressurized (or were). but the question is whether there is an access door to the gear shaft. I would suggest you ask this question in the technical/ops forum at airliners.net.
posted by krautland at 10:01 AM on June 1, 2007

For reference, here is the passage from the book:

"I reached down and felt for the snap-out knobs I knew were at the base of the toilet, pulled them out, twisted them and lifted out the entire toilet apparatus, a self-contained plumbing unit, to disclose the two-foot-square hatch cover for the vacuum hose used to service the aircraft on the ground.

[...] I squeezed down into the toilet compartment, opened the hatch and wriggled through, hanging from the hatch combing by my fingers, dangling ten feet above the tarmac. I knew when I opened the hatch that an alarm beeper would sound in the cockpit, but I also knew from past flights that the hatch was often jarred open slightly by the impact of landing and that the pilot, since he was already on the ground, usually just shut off the beeper as the hatch being ajar posed no hazard."

If this is accurate, it sounds like he moved the entire toilet including the tank, and exited from the space the tank had occupied via the vacuum hose hatch.
posted by mbrubeck at 10:17 AM on June 1, 2007

More details from this pilots' forum:

1. "You would have to squeeze past all the hydraulic compartment reservoirs, pipes and componants - impossible.
   
   
2. The toilet servicing panels are purely recessed parts of the pressure skin with holes cut in them for the toilet drain pipes to pass through. Even without the pipes there you could only get your arm outside the aircraft. The recesses are also covered by a door to fair in with the fuselage."

posted by mbrubeck at 10:20 AM on June 1, 2007

Er... this is a memoir by a man who lied for a living.
posted by A189Nut at 10:28 AM on June 1, 2007 [3 favorites]

While I have never worked on a Vickers aircraft design (VC-10, or otherwise), I just did some engineering work on a potable water pumping system for the Boeint 787 - which includes all galley and toilet plumbing. Based on my research for, and work on, that project.....and prior knowledge of general commercial aircraft designs (including Boeing, Airbus, Fokker, and Embraer) I would say that claim is a flat out lie. There simply is not enough room for a bosy to fit in the panel areas without removing dozens to hundreds of barriers.
posted by wylde21 at 1:18 PM on June 1, 2007

I wrote the book, Catch Me If You Can, more than 23 years ago. Obviously, this was written from my perspective as a 16-year old with the help of a co-writer (I'm now 54 and I sold the movie rights in 1980). I was interviewed by the co-writer only about four times. I believe he did a great job of telling the story, but he also over dramatized and exaggerated some of the story.
posted by spilon at 2:08 PM on June 1, 2007

Many thanks for all your replies. I loved both the book and the movie but this is one detail that I always found a little too incredible. I guess the mark of a good con man is that they make you want to believe. The same for a ghost writer and the same for hollywood.
posted by rongorongo at 5:10 PM on June 1, 2007