An airport ground worker has been killed in Iran in a horrific accident when they were sucked into the engine of a Boeing 737 airplane which was undergoing routine maintenance.
The 26-year-old aircraft had just landed in the Iranian city of Chah Bahar after a flight from Tehran and engineers were carrying out some maintenance on the engines when the gruesome incident took place.
According to Iranian authorities, the engineers were carrying out work on the engines with them still running when one of the ground workers stepped into the ‘danger zone’ surrounding the engine.
The suction power of the CFM engine was powerful enough to sweep the engineer off his feet and into the engine, causing near-instant death.
The engineers were carrying out a test run of the engine at the time of the accident so they would have been going at quite a high speed. A safety perimeter had, however, been set up around the engine and engineers were instructed not to step within this area.
It has been reported that the deceased engineer realised that he had forgotten a tool in the vicinity of the engine and stepped into the danger zone to retrieve the took when he was sucked into the fans.
Sadly, this is the latest in a series of similar incidents.
On New Year’s Eve 2022, an airport ground worker at Montgomery Regional Airport in Alabama was sucked into the engine of an Embraer E175LR regional jet operated by a subsidiary of American Airlines.
An investigation discovered that a safety perimeter had been set up around the engines after the aircraft arrived at the gate following a flight from Dallas. The engines had been left running because the auxiliary power unit was broken.
For some reason, a female ground worker strayed too close to the running engine, despite being warned by a colleague to stay back due to the risk of getting sucked into the blades.
Earlier this year, a ground worker at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam was killed after being sucked into the engine of another Embraer regional jet. Authorities said the May 30 incident was a death by suicide and refused to provide further details out of respect for the deceased relatives.
A similar incident occurred in San Antonio in June 2023 when a ground worker died by suicide when he strayed too close to a Delta Air Lines Airbus A320 that had just landed and was pulling onto the stand.
I would sarcthey poorly train about no line zone and safe distances from air intakes and propeller line of operation. As all A& P ‘s are as well as ground support personnel are ancillary trained to respect those areas as if were an immutable law. Just saying that is why she’s not here today. A travesty that an airlines needs to address and fix. This is a zero tolerance. If they were doing testing they have the baskets for those motors to bolt on to . Providing safety from ingestion at least