Milan airport: Passengers describe horror moment man was sucked into jet engine

Witnesses have described the horror moment an Italian builder 'ran' onto the tarmac at an airport before he was sucked into a plane engine and killed.

Builder Andrea Russo, 35, from the Calcinate county, in Bergamo, Lombardy, apparently threw himself into the jet engine and was sucked in at Milan Bergamo Airport on Tuesday. Russo arrived at the major airport without a ticket, and is said to have got past security and opened a door in the arrivals area that led directly to the aircraft parking area. Horrified passengers on the plane revealed their shocking account of that harrowing moment.

Russo was sucked into an Airbus A319 Volotea plane engine at around 10.20am, bringing the airport to a halt. Witnesses on flight V73511 - from Milan to Asturias in northern Spain - shared the "horrible" scenes they endured.

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Spaniard Carmen Garcia told Asturian paper La Nueva Espana: "We were in the plane and about to take off with the engines on, when a person came running towards us. He got under the plane and suddenly we felt a very powerful vibration. People brought their hands to their heads and ducked down. Then the fire brigade, ambulances and police started to arrive."

Daniel Isla, a Chilean national living in Italy, told the paper: "I didn’t see anything but heard a tremendous noise in the engine turbine. We didn’t know what had happened at first but then the plot came out and told us a tragedy had occurred and there’d been a terrible accident and someone had been sucked into the engine.

"It was a feeling of incredulity initially because we couldn’t believe what had happened. We wanted to think it was something else until we realised it was true."

Passenger Ana Sanchis, another of the 154 passengers on board, said crew attendants had advised them to pull down their window shutters and not look out because it was "very unpleasant". She added: "We left via the side of the right wing which was where the incident occurred, with the firemen forming a corridor all the way down and everything covered up. It was horrible."

Another flyer Stefano Carrara told Spanish news site La Razon: "I thought it was a bird, but a girl said, 'I see pieces of meat,' an animal or something like that." Police sources have reportedly said the man who died had a history of "drugproblems". Investigators are now working on the possibility that his actions were deliberate and premeditated.

The passengers due to leave Milan Bergamo at 10.30am yesterday ended up departing at 16.45pm in another plane and arrived in Asturias just before 7pm local time.

A witness, on another flight, told Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera what they saw in that terrifying moment. The traveller said: "I saw a guy running away from officials At first he jumped against the engine on the right side of the plane and then he went around and jumped or was sucked into the other engine on the left.

"I couldn’t tell if it was voluntary or not, I couldn’t tell if he was sucked into the plane or threw himself at the aircraft." Two officers at the airport chased after Russo but were not able to stop him before he reached the engine.

He is understood to have broken into the airport by driving the wrong way down a road before abandoning his car and then running into the terminal. Russo was not reported to have had any connection to the airline, according to Volotea.

Public Prosecutor Maurizio Romanelli said: "We are investigating on any possible relationships with the airport or the world of aeroplanes. In the car with which he arrived at the airport, full of all kinds of material, we have not found anything that could provide any kind of explanation."

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