A SpiceJet technician died on Wednesday while doing maintenance work on the main landing gear of a plane at Kolkata airport, the airline said. The hydraulic door flaps of the landing gear were broken into, but the technician Rohit Pandey had already died, PTI reported.
The accident occurred at 1.45 am, an airport official said. “Pandey 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 Kolkata airport on July 10,” the airline said in a statement. “Inadvertently, the main landing gear hydraulic door closed and he got stuck in between the hydraulic door flaps. The hydraulic doors were broken to rescue Pandey but he was declared dead.”
Police said that a complaint of “unnatural death” had been filed at the airport’s police station and the forensic team was gathering evidence. “Our officers have reached the spot,” PTI quoted a police official as saying. “We are talking to other staffers of the airline who were present there. We are trying to understand whether it was a technical glitch or the result of someone’s callousness.”
Indian aviation regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation on Tuesday had issued safety directions to airlines after multiple incidents of planes overshooting runways due to bad weather had been reported. “Aircraft operations during monsoon season poses challenges, which of late have resulted in a number of occurrences,” the circular said, according to India Today. “Crew should be well aware of the aircraft limitations and of take-off/landing performance calculations during the adverse weather operations.”
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