V-Flyer

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/met ... 90623.html

A continental engineer got too close to a 737 engine in Houston during checks and was sucked into it [:0] This happened whilst people were boarding the plane! The coover of the engine was open following an earlier problem but bot heard much else.

That is not a nice way to go [:(]

At least it's quick, although it can do quite a lot of damage to the fan blades which is a downside

A quick way to go but still.... That is scary!!

Originally posted by sailor99
At least it's quick, although it can do quite a lot of damage to the fan blades which is a downside

Downside? I would have thought that the deaath would be the downside rather than the damage to the aircraft

It is a quick way to go though, I imagine that there are a lot worse ways to be killed/injured by being a mechanic on an aircraft!

Originally posted by sailor99
At least it's quick, although it can do quite a lot of damage to the fan blades which is a downside

Nice to see you've got your priorities right Sailor [:I][:I]

How gruesome!!!

Could have been worse - the flight could have been delayed

[:#][B)]

LMFAO

You deserve that purple eye [:0]

Originally posted by sailor99
Could have been worse - the flight could have been delayed

[:#][B)]

dude...that is way to cold,even for me ! [n][V][:#]

Can understand why the engine was on during boarding? Even if it was 'windmilling', surely it owuldnt produce enough suction?

I was just thinking that, An engine running at a minimal rate would blow an open cover straight off???

Cockpit error must have occured??? Or engine mapping malfunction???

I don't understand, if the engine was just ticking over i wouldn't have thought it was powerful enough?

I was only looking at the engine cover of a 737 yesterday, and it says on the side that you must give 4 meter clearance to the side and in front of the engine to avoid a problem.

The incident was at El Paso (not Houston), I can only think that the engines were left on idle to facilitate a quick turnaround? Although this is unlikely, as if the pax were boarding from the tarmac, then they too would have been at risk.

Under normal circumstances engines are spooled up during pushback, where there is normally a member of staff who walks out with the plane and is connected to the airplne with a headset, to communicate with the pilots. Perhaps it was a journalistic error, and it was in fact this guy who strayed to far?...

While showering I started to do the math on what it would take to suck a man into an engine..well it dawned on me that this engine would of have to of been running at something around 65% to get enough force up to move the ave male adult..the story linked above doesn't go into it,but after searching around I found that the engine was run up due to a previous problem with the engine...ok now the problem I have with this is,why were CO boarding pax using stairs not a jetway when an engine is being run up?

As an engineer, shouldn't he have known better?

We're shown a film of this happening in training. But the bloke survived!

Originally posted by Lipstick
We're shown a film of this happening in training. But the bloke survived!

Right, I read the thread about this on a.net... last time I looked, it was quite reverent and hadn't degenerated into A vs. B or anything like that.

As Lipstick says, the threat of ingestion into a running engine is made very clear during training.

The 737 is especially dangerous because it's engines are mounted so close to the ground, and on the shorter models, the -600 and -500, also very close to the nose gear.

Apparently, whether you can survive an ingestion or not depends on the engine type. Some engines, like the old Pratt JT8Ds on the 737-200, have a grid of guide vanes in front of the fan, which can stop something as big as a person being ingested.

Newer engines, like the CFMs on the later 737s, don't have the "grid" of fixed metalwork, so being sucked directly onto the spinning fan and through the engine is a real danger, as we saw demonstrated this week. Poor chap, at least it was quick.

It was also interesting to note differences in procedure between airlines and between the UK and US with respect to things like airstarts (being started using a compressed airhose, usually because your APU is inop). It seems that the UK airlines may have slightly safer procedures in place to protect their staff around running engines.

Finally, a pic which sums it up. While this is from a primarily GA airfield, so it's mostly prop aircraft, though there's about 4-5 737 movements a day now as well, this sign (clicky) puts the dangers of an active apron forward in an unambiguous way.

(This sign is on the walkway between the grass parking for visiting light aircraft and the apron exit at Blackpool.)

Mike

P.S. There was some conjecture whether the EMB 170/190 will pose the same ingestion threat as the 737, as it is similarly low to the ground and has low-slung engines.

There was an email doing the rounds a good few years ago with someone getting sucked into a US Navy Jet on a carrier. Genuine or not I don't know, but it wasn't a pretty sight coming out of the exhaust.[:$]