Body found in airliner wheel well

• Crew finds a man's body on South African Airways aircraft


• The Airbus A340 was parked in a remote area of Dulles


• The find didn't affect flight operations

(CNN) -- A man's body was found Saturday afternoon inside the landing-gear wheel well of a plane that had landed at a suburban Washington airport, authorities said.

Ground crew assigned to the aircraft -- an Airbus A340 operated by South African Airways -- discovered the body around 1:30 p.m. in a remote parking area of Dulles International Airport, the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority said in a statement.

Airport police, fire and other personnel went to the scene, joined by FBI agents and U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers.

The location of the flight's origin was not immediately known.

The Fairfax County, Virginia, medical examiner's office will handle the case, according to the airports authority, which said that "an active investigation is ongoing."

The discovery did not affect any operations on runways or in terminals at Dulles, which is one of the nation's busiest airports and is located about 25 miles west of Washington, D.C.

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In 2010, a 16-year-old boy stowed away on a US Airways flight bound for Boston from Charlotte, North Carolina. Delvonte Tisdale's body was later discovered along a flight path in Massachusetts. He was believed to have fallen out of the wheel well while the plane was preparing to land at Boston Logan International Airport.

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