Texas airport worker dies after being sucked into Delta jet engine

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/25/texas-airport-worker-dies-after-being-sucked-into-delta-jet-engine

by marban • 3 years ago

25 46 3 years ago

sgbeal• 3 years ago

Officials added that the worker – whose identity has not been publicly released – was ingested into the one engine which the plane in question had on at the time.

...

But the cause of worker’s death hadn’t officially been determined

Wait... what?

dmitrygr• 3 years ago

Unlikely but possible: worker dies of a brain aneurysm, hasn’t fallen down yet. Gets sucked in. Sure it isn’t likely, but it is POSSIBLE.

laserdancepony2• 3 years ago

Best of luck to the poor coroner.

WJW• 3 years ago

The official cause of death can legally only be determined by an investigation, which hadn't yet been concluded by the time the article was published. I'm willing to bet they'll conclude it was "ingestion by jet engine" though.

mschuster912• 3 years ago

That's not a cause of death - a cause of death is something like "blunt force trauma", or in the case that the engine compressor blade sliced off an artery, "blood loss".

chiph2• 3 years ago

Surprisingly, there is an ICD-10-CM medical diagnosis code for this: V97.33 Sucked into jet engine

bdcrazy• 3 years ago

In these kinds of incidents, the steps that led to the final outcome are more causes than the actual ingestion. Why was the engine on? Did it need to be on? Why was the worker anywhere near a running engine?

pixl973• 3 years ago

I'm guessing we'll find out it was very similar to the other recent death due to this. Staff is being pushed to go as fast as possible and being punished for not going fast enough, then the carrier says "we told them to follow safety protocols, it's not our fault"

anovikov• 3 years ago

Maybe the cause of death will be qualified as "suicide".

qup• 3 years ago

That's a matter of culpability. There's still a chance they can blame the dead guy for his own death.

tourmalinetaco2• 3 years ago

And depending on the situation, they may be right to. My friend does workplace safety at various facilities, and the amount of people who skirt basic safety principles like using hand rails and paying attention near machinery is astonishing. One even broke their legs falling down stairs because they refused to use the handrails, then attempted to sue the construction company for damages. Needless to say they got told to fuck off.

At a certain point, the safety personnel can only watch in horror as basic OSHA guidelines are ignored at every step. Of course it may be a case that the safety personnel were incompetent and not training employees, but I say its a 50/50 whether it was their fault or not.

jmclnx• 3 years ago

The company also made it a point to say that its initial investigation had shown the worker’s death was “unrelated to Unifi’s operational processes, safety procedures and policies”

Looks like CYA Mode to me. If this is an accident, then their safety procedures need changing.

paulddraper2• 3 years ago

Unless the worker was not complying with precesses, procedures, or policies.

ajdude• 3 years ago

They did this with the truck driver with that 95 explosion outside Philadelphia the other week. My dad's a truck driver so I was trying to find out what happened to this man. For several days, the mayor was saying that there were no deaths as of yet reported, but nobody will talk about what happened to the driver. Eventually they announced his death after having an investigation and alerting the family.

phendrenad23• 3 years ago

This keeps happening, at a rate of several per year. Clearly the error margin isn't large enough. I suggest maybe employees should be strapped in to heavy forklifts at all times when near planes.

cdot22• 3 years ago

the worker had “intentionally stepped in front of the live engine” on the jet.

It doesnt sound like this is a worker safety issue

laserdancepony2• 3 years ago

The employer would surely love that to avoid liability.

interestica• 3 years ago

I don’t know... Being restricted by some sort of restraint system could mean the result is only partial ingestion.

mataug• 3 years ago

Partial ingestion seems worse than full ingestion

phendrenad23• 3 years ago

It could also result in many fewer ingestions overall.

dctoedt• 3 years ago

Tangentially, from a U.S. Navy incident: "An intake on the A-6 Intruder isn't very big. As Bridges was sucked in, he was able to stretch out his arm and wedge himself on the bullet of the blades and the wall of the intake, holding himself just inches from certain death as the engine fully shut down.

"Bridges was helped down by his fellow flight deck sailors when it was safe to help him. He walked away from the incident with a broken collarbone, a blown eardrum and some cuts and scrapes. One sailor who was aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt at the time said Bridges did not return to the flight deck for some time."

https://www.businessinsider.com/us-sailor-survived-being-suc...

chiph2• 3 years ago

We had a crew chief ingested & killed by his F-16 at my base. He ducked under the nose rather than walk around the front of the aircraft (like he was trained to do) and the airflow caught his field jacket and pulled him in.

They are required to check the intake as part of the pre-flight inspection, and the bar down the middle will not save you. (image below is safe for viewing)

https://www.dvidshub.net/image/3143219/149th-amxs-maintains-...

WirelessGigabit• 3 years ago

Sometimes you read stuff on the internet about lockouts. Some people even say to do a lockout when you do an oil change, avoiding that you forget to put in new oil.

Whether this is needed or not is debatable, but the consequences are, depending on the car, the cost of a new engine + labor.

I hope for this guy down there that there are multiple lockouts out there to ensure he's out there.

dwaltrip• 3 years ago

Would multiple bars meaningfully degrade the performance of the jet?

gundmc2• 3 years ago

I was interested in understanding the magnitude of the force exerted by the air intake. In my brief search, I found an article that referenced ~14 feet as the safe upstream distance for the engine on a 737.

The article also contained a link to this strange and disturbing, but relevant animation https://youtu.be/yYfrU5WrYu0

crazygringo• 3 years ago

it appeared the worker had “intentionally stepped in front of the live engine” on the jet and that police were investigating that aspect.

Is this supposed to suggest it was suicide-by-jet-engine?

I'm unclear what work "intentionally" is doing in this sentence. Does it mean it's just normal walking as opposed to slipped-and-fell-off-the-wing, or that she walked in front of it knowing full well it was live and would be lethal?

jahewson• 3 years ago

Yes, that’s what they’re suggesting.

The plane was taxiing after just landing so no workers should be anywhere near it.

Texas airport worker dies after being sucked into Delta jet engine

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