Aircraft technician crushed by landing gear

A trainee technician in India was crushed to death yesterday by the landing gear flaps on an aircraft while conducting maintenance work, airline SpiceJet said. “Inadvertently, the main landing gear hydraulic door closed and he got stuck in between the hydraulic door flaps,” SpiceJet said after the incident at Kolkata airport in eastern India.

“The hydraulic doors were broken to rescue (Rohit) Pandey but he was declared dead,” the airline said. “The entire SpiceJet family stands together in grief in this unfortunate incident.”

Airport director Kaushik Bhattacharya said that Pandey, 26, was “sucked into the lower end of the aircraft due to hydraulic pressure. His body had to be cut out of it”. The aircraft was a Canadian Bombardier Q400.