PDT Employee Killed in MGM

According article about it on Reuters the accident happened after the airplanes arrival at the gate, and the worker was “ killed in an accident involving one of the airplanes engines that was running. “
Damn.
 
Rumor stemming from an alleged screenshot of the incident report says the worker was attempting to open the baggage door when they were ingested into #2. Also claimed it was a Piedmont crew handling an Envoy flight.
 
Rumor stemming from an alleged screenshot of the incident report says the worker was attempting to open the baggage door when they were ingested into #2. Also claimed it was a Piedmont crew handling an Envoy flight.
Ugh.

at my last airline the “policy” was to minimize both fuel used by and cycleson the APU. To comply with that they wanted us to taxi into the gate single engine, park, set the brake, and leave number 1 running until the GPU was hooked up. All while people are running down below doing doing their •. I absolutely hated that and it made me super nervous.
 
Ugh.

at my last airline the “policy” was to minimize both fuel used by and cycleson the APU. To comply with that they wanted us to taxi into the gate single engine, park, set the brake, and leave number 1 running until the GPU was hooked up. All while people are running down below doing doing their •. I absolutely hated that and it made me super nervous.
That’s our policy as well, and I never can seem to remember that when I’m pulling the plane in to a gate.
 
Not unheard of sadly. Continental 737-500 and contract Mx worker in ELP, January 2006
 
Not unheard of sadly. Continental 737-500 and contract Mx worker in ELP, January 2006

My first thought was this event also. There’s a surprising number of photos on the internet from that as well.
 
Also claimed it was a Piedmont crew handling an Envoy flight.

This is pretty standard across most airlines. Very few regional carriers (or at some places even mainline) have ground staff at every place they go. PDT is mostly a ground handling company with some airplanes.
 
My first thought was this event also. There’s a surprising number of photos on the internet from that as well.

that was definitely tragic and gory. On that one they were doing a high power run up doing an ops check of something, so it was an unusual situation as opposed to normal ops. I’m curious what was going on in this latest one.
 
I've probably spent more time then most here out on the ramp in very close proximity to engines running at full power, the diagrams of the safe zones given in the AMM can begin to seem overly cautious and complacency is likely to set in the more often a person is actually out there doing it. These days with FADEC the engines are almost plug and play with regards to rigging, but in the olden times we'd have to set limits for rpm and egt, accel and decel rates as well as just look for any fuel or oil leaks. I've been out at the blast fence for hours trying to get things dialed in. The adjustments require you to be hands on with the engine when it's running at T/O power often times while standing on a ladder. I'm guilty of having been complacent, I would normally use over ear hearing protection and rarely wear a baseball cap at work but one rainy day we were finishing up an engine change on a G-III and I didn't feel like getting my head wet so I put on a cap and quickly figured out it and my ear muffs weren't compatible so I switched to ear plugs and off we went to the blast fence. Adjusting a Spey engine requires a ladder and multiple trips from the engine to the cockpit so the person running the engine and the person adjusting it can communicate and ensure we're on the same page, we use the ailerons and speed brakes as references to fine tune things, but it normally involves a lot of running back and forth and it can become a bit tiresome. The fuel control on a Spey is mounted towards the front of the engine just a little aft of the trailing edge of the wing, I don't recall what adjustment I was making, probably accel/decel, and I decided to take a load off and have a seat on the trailing edge directly under the inlet rather than stand on the ladder. You can probably figure out where this story is going, as I felt the baseball cap start to get sucked off my head I had a few things run through it, first was the hat was going to hit the fan and then how much • would hit the fan when I got back to the hangar. I was young with ninja like reflexes and grabbed my hat as it was coming off and caught it, but I had my adjustment tool in the same hand and not only gave myself a nice lump but also a small cut on the top of my head. We got it all done and everything was okay but I'd certainly taught myself a lesson, those safety zones exist for a reason. Occasionally seeing the aforementioned pictures of wing mounted engines and what can happen when people aren't respecting those safety zones always reaffirms my sometimes overcautious approach. I have to add if someone here ever works on Gulfstreams you need to be outside of the airplane on the ground to see two things, stand at the nose safety position and watch one test accel/decel on each engine separately and look at one when it's at max diff on the ground, the cabin windows inflate about 3/4-1".
 
Ugh.

at my last airline the “policy” was to minimize both fuel used by and cycleson the APU. To comply with that they wanted us to taxi into the gate single engine, park, set the brake, and leave number 1 running until the GPU was hooked up. All while people are running down below doing doing their •. I absolutely hated that and it made me super nervous.

Is that mandatory? If not, I’d ignore it. Pinnacle preferred it, also. I never did.
 
I'm curious if your opinion of the policy changes any with the kind of equipment. I.e., do tail mounted engines make any difference to safety?
 
This is pretty standard across most airlines. Very few regional carriers (or at some places even mainline) have ground staff at every place they go. PDT is mostly a ground handling company with some airplanes.
I worked the ramp for PDT for 4 years. Still have yet to ever lay a finger on or step foot on a PDT plane.
 
Ugh.

at my last airline the “policy” was to minimize both fuel used by and cycleson the APU. To comply with that they wanted us to taxi into the gate single engine, park, set the brake, and leave number 1 running until the GPU was hooked up. All while people are running down below doing doing their •. I absolutely hated that and it made me super nervous.
Guys used to do that at 9E in CVG. They were quick about hooking the power up. With the engines on the tail it wasn’t too scary (speaking from ramp experience). I’ve seen guys at brown down this also. Definitely not the most comfortable feeling to have the engines running in a 75/76 while waiting for MX to hook up the power cart. In the grand scheme of things what are we saving since everyone isn’t on the same accord?
Honestly I’m surprised we don’t see more of these accidents. Folks call the rampers dumb, inexperienced, etc but don’t blame the companies for fostering an environment where the operation is rushed because metrics rule everything and management is trying to stuff 10lbs of crap into a bag only suitable for 5lbs. The same with customer service. I’ve seen agents give horrible customer service to external and internal customers because they have to meet the metrics set by the company and get the flight out.
 
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Guys used to do that at 9E in CVG. They were quick about hooking the power up. With the engines on the tail it wasn’t too scary (speaking from ramp experience). I’ve seen guys at brown down this also. Definitely not the most comfortable feeling to have the engines running in a 75/76 while waiting for MX to hook up the power cart. In the grand scheme of things what are we saving since everyone isn’t on the same accord?
Honestly I’m surprised we don’t see more of these accidents. Folks call the rampers dumb, inexperienced, etc but don’t blame the companies for fostering an environment where the operation is rushed because metrics rule everything and management is trying to stuff 10lbs of crap into a bag only suitable for 5lbs. The same with customer service. I’ve seen agents give horrible customer service to external and internal customers because they have the meet the metrics set by the company and get the flight out.
Truth. I will never talk crap about rampers especially when stuff like this happens. Especially at out stations there are almost always newbies still learning the job and with as many moving parts as there are down there it can be super dangerous. Couple that with inexperience and also kind of shocked things like this don’t happen more often n
 
I’ve seen guys at brown down this also.

With all of the noise-sensitive airports internationally, the guidance on my fleet is generally to avoid the APU "when operationally feasible" or whatever the nomenclature. The C/As who are nearing retirement (which is easily 75% of them) generally don't give a crap and have you fire it up if there's a snowball's chance you're going to wind up sitting there with one running for an extended period of time. If they want the engines AND APU shut down the second we stop moving, they need to make us confident that it's not going to end with a bunch of relays clicking and us filling out a coupon or some noob getting a turbine haircut.
 
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