The parents of a man who was killed by a jet engine after walking onto the tarmac at Salt Lake City International Airport in 2024 are accusing the city of negligence.
In a lawsuit filed late last month in Utah, the parents of the late Kyler Efinger said the city-run airport failed to intervene or help their son, who apparently experienced a manic episode while waiting to board a Delta flight to Denver. When Efinger entered a restricted area outside the terminal where airplanes are de-iced, airport personnel failed to locate him, they said, giving him time to crawl into the jet engine of an Airbus A220, which killed him.
Efinger’s family is seeking damages in excess of $300,000.
According to information released by police at the time of the incident, Efinger was 30 and a resident of Park City, Utah.
Lawsuit’s Allegations
In their filing, attorneys representing Efinger’s parents said Kyler Efinger lived with bipolar disorder and experienced occasional episodes where he would become disoriented. He is believed to have experienced such an episode on Jan. 1, 2024, when he began running down the airport’s moving walkways.
His erratic behavior in a Utah Jazz store inside the airport prompted the manager to call airport operations, but he was not taken aside or detained. He was later seen walking barefoot, with part of his shirt unzipped.
After trying and failing to open two gate doors, he successfully opened an emergency door that did not have a delayed egress locking system.
“The city’s airport facility was so inadequately designed, managed, monitored, and secured that Kyler Efinger, a ticketed passenger experiencing an obvious mental health episode, was able to walk unimpeded through two emergency exit doors and onto the tarmac,” the complaint states.
Airport operations staff became aware that Efinger had entered a restricted area but could not locate him, and at one point transmitted inaccurate information about where to search for him. A city police officer allegedly described the airport’s response as a “wild goose chase.”
“In a situation where Kyler would still be alive if officers had located him 30 seconds
sooner, about the first seven minutes of the city’s search for him were wholly ineffective,” the lawsuit alleges.
Efinger walked about a mile before encountering the A220. He climbed into the airplane’s engine cowling and was pulled in.
The pilot of the aircraft had not been made aware that there was an unauthorized person walking in the area, attorneys said.
The lawsuit argues that the airport owed Efinger a “duty of care” as a ticketed passenger and violated it by failing to maintain proper security systems, not training staff and agents on how to recognize and respond to mental health emergencies, and not alerting pilots, air traffic control, and ground operations that a passenger had exited the terminal and walked into the apron area.
The airport has not commented on the lawsuit.
