Counselling has been offered to witnesses after a man crashed into a passenger plane’s engine at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport on Wednesday afternoon, resulting in a “horrific” death.
An Embraer 190 jetliner engulfed a person while its engine was running in the Netherlands on Wednesday afternoon. At the time of writing, the identity of the person killed has not been released, and it is unclear whether they were a staff member or a member of the public, or whether it was an accident or suicide.
A person entered the engine of KLM flight KL1341 from Amsterdam to Billund, Denmark, while the flight was being pushed back from the takeoff point to reach the runway. The death was witnessed by numerous witnesses, including passengers and crew, who are also receiving counselling.
Serious incident at Schiphol Airport.
A person is involved in a car accident @Embraer KLM. https://t.co/u21x8uH9OG pic.twitter.com/Gf81P0Cqme— Menno Swart (@MennoSwart) May 29, 2024
Passengers were removed from the plane and questioned by police to try to understand what happened and why. All passengers were then transferred to a new flight six hours later, but a replacement crew was put on board after the original pilot suffered a “severe psychological shock” and was unable to fly, Dutch newspapers reported. advertisement I will report.
“Today we witnessed a horrific incident in which a person was caught in an aircraft engine. Our thoughts go out to the family and our thoughts are with the passengers and colleagues who witnessed this,” Schiphol said in a statement.
advertisement The paper points to earlier rumors that the fatality was a ground staff trainee who had been sucked into the engine as he bent down to pick up something from the floor. The paper cites sources who claim this is a false rumor and that information suggests the fatality was “hit by the engine” and not by airport staff.
Telegraph Quote Witnesses described an “infernal noise” and a huge amount of smoke rising immediately after the person entered the running jet engine.
Such accidents are rare thanks to safety protocols developed over the years, but they do occur. Breitbart News reported that a ground crew member died in an accident at Montgomery Regional Airport in Alabama in 2022. Courtney Edwards, 34, was engulfed by the engine of an American Airlines-Piedmont Airlines flight, despite having been instructed minutes earlier to stay away from the aircraft because the engine was still running.
The airline was fined $15,000 after it was found to have not adequately enforced safety rules against Edwards.
