Worker Locked in Plane’s Cargo Hold Avoids Becoming Passenger

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/09/us/09cargo.html?_r=2&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha23

WASHINGTON — Passengers on a US Airways plane ready for departure from Reagan National Airport here on Monday morning apparently alerted a flight attendant to screams and thumps coming from under the floor, which turned out to be a baggage handler who was trapped in the forward cargo hold.

Evidently another baggage handler had closed the cargo compartment door on the first worker, who had crawled into the space, just 37 inches high, while loading baggage.

“The pilot came on and said one of the baggage handlers had been locked in the cargo compartment,” said James C. Goodridge, of West Hartford, Conn., who was on his way home.

The trapped handler was also assigned to operate the tug that pushes the plane back from the gate, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement. As workers waiting to move the plane noticed that the tug driver was missing, the co-pilot opened a side window and yelled to the ground crew that someone was “yelling and pounding” from inside the cargo hold, the F.A.A. said.

After the worker was freed unharmed, he drove the tug to push the plane back from the gate, and the plane, an Embraer E-170, left a few minutes early, completing its trip to Hartford without further incident.

A spokesman for US Airways, James T. Olson, said that the airline was investigating the incident and that ramp personnel were told to put safety first. The plane, with 76 seats, carried only 29 passengers, mostly business travelers who did not check much luggage.

“It was a light passenger load, a light luggage load, and there was no condition to require anyone to be rushing,” Mr. Olson said.

In June 2005, a baggage handler working on the same model plane at the same airport was killed when she maneuvered a mobile belt baggage loader up to the fuselage; the vehicle hit the fuselage and she was beheaded.

Two years ago, a JetBlue cargo handler was stuck in the cargo hold of a slightly larger Embraer plane, an E-190, and flew from Kennedy International Airport in New York to Logan Airport in Boston.