Courtney Edwards, a ramp agent at Montgomery Regional Airport, was killed on December 31.
The NTSB says a worker killed at an Alabama airport was too close to a jet engine despite warnings
The National Transportation Safety Board confirms warnings given to an airline worker killed on December 31. The airline worker at an Alabama airport was subjected to multiple warnings about the dangers of being near running jet engines.
A preliminary report released by the agency on Monday did not explicitly assign blame for the incident at Montgomery Regional Airport. Instead, it cited examples of workers being warned to avoid running jet engines when planes are grounded.
The ramp agent for American Airlines commuter airline American Eagle was on the tarmac. She had reportedly just set up a safety cone at the back of the parked aircraft when an engine fatally struck her.
The NTSB confirmed this. However, the NTSB report did not mention the worker by name. The Communications Workers of America identified the employee as 34-year-old Courtney Edwards, a local mother of three children.
She allegedly worked for regional affiliate Piedmont Airlines, according to the union and American Airlines. The report details numerous instances where the worker was explicitly warned or made aware of the risks associated with being too close to the engines.
The report also mentioned instances where two ramp agents attempted to wave workers off after observing them approach a plane and an engine too closely.
In addition, according to the NTSB report, an agent tried to warn a worker to stay back after witnessing her almost trip over an engine's exhaust in one incident. The crew was informed during two safety briefings that the engines would keep running.
This will continue until electricity can be connected from the ground before the plane departs Dallas-Fort Worth for its gate.
According to the report, the crew was instructed to keep the crew on the ground away from the aircraft until the engines turned off, the turbines stopped spinning, and a rotating beacon light was turned off.
