4.5 m of the front of an engine until its blades stop spinning.
A death was reported at Alabama airport last month after a worker was sucked into a jet engine despite repeated warnings not to go near it.
An employee,who worked at Montgomery Regional Airport in Alabama, passed away on December 31 after going too close to to an American Jet that just arrived from Dallas, Texas.
The employee was not named in the preliminary report, which was published by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) on Monday.
The flight was therefore operated by Envoy Air, an affiliate of American Airlines, and was carrying 63 passengers and crew, the report said.
After parking the plane at the gate, the pilots decided to leave the engines running for a two-minute cool-down period, investigators said in the report.
They did this because an auxiliary power unit on board was not working and they needed the engines to stay on until the plane could be linked to ground power.
The pilots alerted airport workers about leaving the engines on. Separately, the crew had also been briefed two times before the plane's arrival that it shouldn't be approached until the engines were shut down, the report said.
Even though he was warned not to get too close, he still walked in front of one of the engines and was pulled in. The co-worker therefore heard a bang before the engine actually shut down.The pilots described feeling the plane "shake violently."
It notes that the American Eagle manual states ground crew should not within 4.5 m of the front of an engine until its blades stop spinning.