The head of Beirut's airport security has resigned after the death of a man who managed to break into a runway undetected and hide in the wheel bay of a Saudi-bound jet, a government source said.

"General Wafik Shoukeir has met with Interior Minister Ziad Baroud to ask that he be relieved of his duties as airport security chief," the source said. He did not confirm whether the resignation was directly linked to the accident.

The accident has sparked widespread outrage over airport security among politicians and in the local media, according to a report in our sister publication, the Gulf Daily News.

"This puts Lebanon's security reputation at stake... and calls for swift and serious action," MP Ahmed Fatfat of Prime Minister Saad Hariri's bloc told a local television.

"This dangerous incident... reveals the vulnerability of our airport security and the safety of civil aviation," the Christian Kataeb (Phalange) party said.

Justice Minister Ibrahim Najjar said family members had identified the man - who had apparently tried to hitch a ride from Beirut to Riyadh - as a Lebanese national through a photograph provided by Saudi authorities.

"There are also reports that he was mentally unstable, but we have yet to confirm them," Najjar said. The man was identified as Firas Haidar and lived in the area of Burj Al Barajneh near Beirut airport, a source close to a probe into the accident said.

The man had somehow managed to grab hold of a wheel of the jet in Beirut on Friday night without the control tower noticing before the plane took off, a Beirut airport official said.

The body was then found by a maintenance worker who inspected the right rear landing gear of the Saudi-owned Nas Air Airbus 320 after it touched down at Riyadh's King Khaled International Airport on Saturday morning, according to the Saudi General Authority of Civil Aviation.

Passengers on Nas Air Flight XY 720 reported seeing a man in a cap with a backpack make a dash for the plane as it prepared to taxi, according to the Lebanese media. He stumbled once and then continued towards the aircraft.

The state-run National News Agency has reported passengers and flight attendants informed the pilot, who did not take any action and continued to take off without informing the control tower. – TradeArabia News Service