Witnesses were offered counselling after a “horrible” death at Amsterdam Schipol Airport on Wednesday afternoon, after a person “walked into the engine” of a passenger jet.
A person was ingested by the running engine of an Embrarer 190 jet in the Netherlands on Wednesday afternoon. The identity of the deceased has not been publicly announced at time of writing, and it is unclear whether they were a member of staff or the public, and whether it was an accident or suicide.
Royal Dutch Airlines (KLM) flight KL1341 flight from Amsterdam to Billund, Denmark was in the process of being pushed back from the stand to head to the runway when the person entered the engine. The death was reportedly witnessed by a large number of people including passengers and crew, who have been offered counselling.
Heftig incident op Schiphol.
Een persoon is in de motor gesprongen van een @embraer van KLM. https://t.co/u21x8uH9OG pic.twitter.com/Gf81P0Cqme— Menno Swart (@MennoSwart) May 29, 2024
The passengers were removed from the flight and questioned by police as they attempt to establish what happened and why. All passengers later flew on a replacement flight six hours later, but with a replacement crew as the original pilots had suffered “a major impact” psychologically and were unfit to fly, Dutch newspaper AD reports.
Schipol airport said in a statement: “There was a horrible incident today in which a person ended up in an aircraft engine… Our thoughts go out to the relatives and we care for the passengers and colleagues who saw this”.
AD notes early rumors that the deceased had been a trainee member of ground crew, who bent down to pick up an object from the floor, and so was sucked into the engine. The paper cites sources who say this is an incorrect rumour, and that their information states the deceased was not an airport employee, and that they “walked into the engine”.
De Telegraaf cites a witness who said there was a “hellish noise” and lots of smoke in the moments after the person entered the running jet engine.
Such accidents are rare — thanks to long developed safety protocols — but are not unknown. Breitbart News reported on the accidental death of a groundcrew worker at Montgomery Regional Airport, Alabama, in 2022. 34-year-old Courtney Edwards was ingested by an American Airlines-Piedmont Airlines flight engine despite having been told not to approach the aircraft while its engines were still running just moments before.
The airline was found to have not sufficiently enforced its safety rules on Edwards and was fined $15,000.