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A person has died after falling into an airplane jet engine at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, on Wednesday. “An incident occurred this afternoon on the platform of Schiphol [Airport] where a person fell into a running aircraft engine and died,” the Netherlands Royal Military police said in a post on the social media platform X on Wednesday.
The police added that they are investigating the circumstances of the incident. It is not clear whether the person was a passenger or an employee.
Passengers were on board the aircraft bound for Billund, in central Denmark, when the fatal incident occurred, a statement from air carrier KLM said.
The passengers and employees disembarked the plane and were given care, according to the military police. “We are currently taking care of the passengers and employees who witnessed the incident at Schiphol,” KLM added on Wednesday.
Schiphol Airport, which is one of Europe’s busiest aviation hubs, described the event as a “horrible incident” in a post on X. “Our thoughts go out to the relatives and we care for the passengers and colleagues who witnessed this,” the statement said.
Sadly, this is not the first example of someone dying in this manner. In December 2022, an airport worker died in an accident at the Montgomery Regional Airport in Alabama after also being ingested into the engine of an aircraft.
The aircraft, an Embraer 170 operated by regional carrier Envoy Air, was “parked at the gate with the parking brake set when a ground support personnel was ingested,” said government agency the National Transportation Safety Board.
And in December 2015 an engineer at Mumbai airport died after being sucked into the engine of an Air India plane.
The deadly incident happened as the Airbus A319 was being towed backward from the parking bay in preparation for taxiing out, an Air India official said at the time. The engineer who died was standing near the landing gear under the plane’s nose as he supervised the process.
Lewis Musonye
