SpiceJet Technician Killed In Freak Accident After Getting Stuck In the Landing Gear Door Of An Aircraft

In a tragic incident, a technician of SpiceJet airline was crushed to death while he was working on an aircraft at the Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose International Airport in Kolkata.

The incident happened in the wee hours today after the technician, identified as Rohit Pandey, got stuck in the main landing gear door of the aircraft while working on it.

His body had to be cut out from the landing gear of the aircraft, with the help of fire brigade.

BCCL/ REPRESENTATIONAL IMAGE

Even though it is not yet clear what led to the freak accident authorities believe that the door of the landing gear could have accidentally shut while Pandey was carrying out maintenance work on it.

"The technician was carrying out maintenance on the landing gear of the Bombardier Q400 plane when the landing door accidentally got closed and he got stuck there," PTI quoted a senior official of the Kolkata airport as saying.

SpiceJet: Extremely saddened to share that our technician Rohit Pandey passed away last night in an unfortunate incident at Kolkata airport. He was doing maintenance work in right hand main landing gear wheel well area of a Q400 aircraft which was parked in Bay No. 32 at airport pic.twitter.com/W5Yo6SVjgH

¡ª ANI (@ANI) July 10, 2019

The Kolkata Police have launched a probe into the death.

BCCL/ REPRESENTATIONAL IMAGE

The accident comes days after India's aviation regulator the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) pulled up SpiceJet for its poor training standards.

Four senior executives of SpiceJet were issued show cause notices by DGCA on Thursday after a special audit team of the aviation regulator, which probed multiple landing incidents involving the airline, found lapses on their part.

REUTERS

According to PTI, the DGCA in its notice said that in the majority of the cases that required corrective training or action, the involved crew "has been given counselling".

12 pilots of SpiceJet were grounded and served show-cause notices to them by the DGCA after six cases of aircraft veering off runway or taxiway were reported recently.

The airline headed by Ajay Singh was in the news for all the wrong reasons even as recently as last week after a SpiceJet flight from Jaipur overshot the main runway after landing at the Mumbai airport amid heavy rains on July 1 causing massive chaos there for days.

BCCL

The main runway of the Mumbai Airport had to remain shut for nearly three days following the incident, which also led to the cancelation of nearly 300 flights.

Following this, the DGCA had issued safety directions to airlines amidst bad weather conditions.

"Aircraft operations during monsoon season poses challenges, which of late have resulted in a number of occurrences," the DGCA circular, said.

"Crew should be well aware of the aircraft limitations and of take-off/landing performance calculations during the adverse weather operations," it added.