A bizarre and fatal incident occurred on Monday night, January 1, 2024, at Salt Lake City International Airport, Utah.
A 30-year-old man from Park City, Utah, was pronounced dead after he was found inside an airplane engine.
Kyler Efinger, who was a ticketed passenger holding a boarding pass for Denver, Colorado, breached an airport emergency exit and made his way to the southern end of the airport’s west runway, where de-icing operations were in progress.
He proceeded to crawl into an aircraft engine. The incident occurred at around 9:50 pm, with police and airport officials confirming that the aircraft’s engines were rotating at the time.
The aircraft involved in the incident was an Airbus A220-100, Delta Air Lines flight staffed by two pilots and three flight attendants destined for San Francisco, California. The flight was canceled after the incident, and the 95 passengers on board were rebooked on other flights.
Delta Air Lines released a statement emphasizing the importance of customer and employee safety and security. They confirmed full cooperation with aviation authorities and law enforcement agencies in the ongoing investigation.
The Salt Lake City Police Department reported that the initial alert about Efinger came from a store manager in the airport, who reported a disturbance with a passenger inside the terminal.
After passing through the emergency exit, personal items, including clothing and shoes belonging to Efinger, were found on one of the airport runways at around 10:06 pm.
Minutes later, dispatchers informed the police of his location at one of the airport’s deicing pads, where he had accessed a plane’s engine.
Officers on the scene requested air traffic controllers to instruct the pilot to shut down the engines immediately.
At around 10:10 pm., Efinger was found unconscious, partially inside the wing-mounted engine of the plane. Despite concerted efforts by officers and airport employees to remove him and administer emergency life-saving measures, including CPR and naloxone (a medication used for opioid overdoses), he was pronounced dead at the scene.
Efinger’s father, Judd Efinger, told a local news outlet that his son had battled mental health issues for the past decade but seemed fine when the family assembled for the Christmas holiday. He added that his son was headed to visit an ailing grandparent at the time of the incident.
The cause and manner of his death are subjects of ongoing investigation by Salt Lake City officers. The Transportation Security Administration, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the National Transportation Safety Board are also participating in the investigation.
