Air India employee dies after being sucked into plane engine at airport

An engineer at Mumbai airport died after being sucked into the engine of an Air India plane, the company said.

The deadly incident happened late Wednesday as the Airbus A319 was being towed backward from the parking bay in preparation for taxiing out, said Anil Mehta, an Air India official.

The engineer, Ravi Subramanian, was standing near the landing gear under the plane's nose as he supervised the process.

Passengers had boarded the aircraft for a flight to the city of Hyderabad. It wasn't clear if any of them saw what happened.

Air India officials declined to give any further details, saying the country's civil aviation regulator is investigating the engineer's death.