A sad accident happened at the Chatrapati Shivaji International Airport in Mumbai, India, that should remind us all about the dangers of getting too close to an operating aircraft engine. An Air India employee was sucked into the engine of an Airbus A319 and died from the injuries sustained from the spinning jet-engine blades. According to a statement on Air India’s Twitter account, the accident happened during the pushback of flight AI 619, which flies daily between Mumbai and Hyderabad.
According to the statement, Air India’s chairman and managing director Ashwani Lohani described the tragic accident as a mishap that is being investigated.
This is not the first time an airport worker or mechanic has been killed by getting sucked into a jet engine. In 2006 a Continental Airlines mechanic was killed during a maintenance related engine runup of a Boeing 737 in El Paso, Texas. And there are many accidents, fatal and non-fatal, involving propeller engines as it is difficult to see the spinning propeller blades when the engine is running. As engines are getting more and more quiet, it becomes increasingly important to exercise vigilance when walking near any types of aircraft.
