FlexibleFlier wrote:An elderly woman was killed by the take-of thrust of, I believe, a Boeing 737 a couple of weeks ago...apparently she couldn't hold onto the fence and was blown backwards into the ocean. Do I need to quote Forrest Gump here?
Forget the people hanging on to the fence the people that are on the beach get blasted as well. I saw an article about someone getting killed on this beach and no shark was to blame. Like you said the jet blast caught her off guard.
When I worked at KJAX we had to watch videos of incidents involving planes on ramps and at the gates, There was a case where a DOBS food truck was going behind a jet that had just pulled in to a gate but was a little short and had to throttle up to move forward and it rolled the Dobs truck about 75 feet before it came to a stop.
It used to amaze me when a B767ER pulled up to a gate and it was raining you could watch the engines suck the water off the ramp and the engines are a good 7 feet off the ground and they are only at idle.
But the craziest thing I saw was a woman trying to pull a chock from the main gear if a B737-400 by sitting down on her but and straddling the landing gear. I nearly freaked out and ran over and grabbed her by the hair and pulled her up
She was madder than a wet hen, and her supervisor wanted to know why I had done that and when I told him what she was doing he escorted her off the ramp and told her I had just saved her life she did not understand until I pointed out to her that if she had managed to pull the chock the plane would have rolled back and squished her like a banana
We used to call B737 ramp sweepers because the engines are so close to the ground that any thing not a physical part of the concrete would get sucked up faster than you could blink an eye
