Airport security officials monitoring bags for loading at Rome's Fiumicino airport were shocked to see the outline – and several of the internal organs – of a human being on their X-ray screens. Minutes later they found a 36-year-old Norwegian fast asleep in the collection area, having spent about a quarter of an hour trundling peacefully, if perilously, through Terminal 3.

The man was on Thursday facing charges – and undergoing medical checks – in connection with his unauthorised ride. Police said he had entered the terminal to catch a flight back to Oslo.

According to a report in the Italian daily La Repubblica, the man, who appeared to have been drinking heavily, dumped his rucksack on the luggage belt of an unoccupied check-in point, then lay down and went to sleep on the main belt where checked-in baggage is deposited. When the belt was activated by the ground attendant at another desk the Norwegian he was carried, fast asleep, through the powerful X-ray machinery. Police said his unscheduled journey had not exposed any security risk. "There is a security system – a sort of roll-up blind – which can only be opened by the member of staff who loads the baggage," a police officer said. "[The Norwegian] could have carried on going round the main belt but he could never have ended up in sensitive areas of the airport."

The paper said the failsafe system was introduced about 10 years ago after a homeless man found his way on to the conveyor belt and was carried off on a similar journey.