A SpiceJet technician died in a freak accident at the Kolkata airport on Wednesday, officials told PTI.
The technician was trapped in landing gear door of aircraft while carrying out maintenance, airport officials said.
In its statement, SpiceJet said, “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.”
“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 Mr Pandey but he was declared dead. The entire SpiceJet family stands together in grief in this unfortunate incident.”
NDTV reports that a case of “unnatural death” has been filed at the Kolkata Airport police station and police is examining how the door got accidentally shut.
An airport official said the Directorate General of Civil Aviation would also carry out an inquiry into the accident.
Earlier this month, the main runway at the Mumbai airport was shut for more than three days after a SpiceJet plane from Jaipur veered off it while landing amid heavy rainfall on 1 July night and got stuck in the adjacent grass area.
On 30 June, another SpiceJet plane from Bhopal veered off the runway at the Surat airport due to heavy rainfall and wind, while on 2 July , another plane of the airline veered off its path on the runway while landing at the Kolkata airport, damaging four-runway lights.
Four senior executives of SpiceJet were issued show cause notices by the DGCA on 4 July after a special audit team of the aviation regulator, which probed multiple landing incidents involving the airline, found lapses on their part, PTI reported.