LONDON: A Russian airline plane ran over the foot of a ground crew member at the Gatwick Airport, prompting massive emergency response and causing the flight to be delayed by over two hours, British media reported.
The ground crew member, reportedly an employee of the Dubai National Air Transport Association (Dnata), was run over by Rossiya Airlines’ airplane, en route to St Petersburg, and immediately moved to the hospital via air ambulance.
Passengers of Rossiya Airlines’ plane, however, had to face a more than a two-hour delay, with one of them, Flora Lu, taking to Twitter to confirm that the incident involved her plane running over the foot of a ground crew member.
According to Lu, the cabin crew members of the plane told the passengers “that we have ran over a person while being taxied to the runway” and that “this person was trapped under the wheel”.
The incident occurred as the plane was on the ramp in order to taxi to the runway for takeoff.
Later, Lu tweeted that “all police, ambulance and fire brigades left” but “few more airport service vehicles arrived”.
“Waiting for extra plane “parts” as the plane is not operational now,” she wrote.
Another passenger, a certain Tom Chapman from Devon, speaking to Mirror Online, said that the Russian passengers “were initially ‘uneasy’ because of ‘everything happening’ after their plane was unexpectedly ‘pulled back'”.
“I felt worried about everything happening. Most passengers were Russian so I was unaware of what they are saying but there was a concern for what was happening.”
“We had a lot of police, fire and ambulance turn up as well as police dogs,” Chapman said.
A Gatwick Airport spokesperson told The Sun: “We can confirm that an incident took place on the airfield at 1710 where a Dnata employee was unfortunately injured and the emergency services were required to attend.”
