Two Seriously Injured in Airplane Maintenance Accident

Two aircraft maintenance personnel were seriously injured after they fell from a platform in a hangar at Taipei Taoyuan International Airport yesterday, September 9.

The workers were repainting a China Airlines Airbus A330. At the same time a crew were working inside the passenger cabin.

The door of the aircraft had to be closed for the painting operation, causing the interior to become uncomfortably hot.

The crew inside the cabin employed an external air-conditioning unit to pump cool air into the cabin.

However, the painting operation also required the exit vents of the cabin to be sealed over. Therefore the cabin pressure rose to more than 2psi.

When the interior crew wanted to exit the plane, the electronic controls for the door didn’t work because of the internal cabin pressure.

The painting crew came to help by manually opening the door from the outside. However, when they released the lock, the door blew out, causing the 5 meter-high elevated platform to collapse and throwing the two workers onto the concrete floor.

One worker was left with a fractured skull, while another suffered open fractures.

China Airlines informed the Labor Bureau and began an internal investigation into the accident. The airline said that the workers did not follow standard operating procedures.

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