Delta Air Lines flight attendant made a $70,000 mistake on Saturday evening after they accidentally deployed an emergency evacuation slide on an Airbus A220 aircraft at Pittsburgh Airport just as the plane was preparing for departure.
The ‘flustered’ flight attendant, with more than 26 years of flying experience, was so embarrassed by his mistake that he felt there was no other option but to publicly apologize to all the passengers whose journey had been majorly disrupted.
It appears that as the aircraft was just about to push back from the gate, the flight attendants armed the doors for departure and then, somehow, the crew member responsible for the forward left-hand door mistakenly lifted the door handle.
Once the door is armed, any movement of the door handle is enough to trigger the emergency power assist functionality, which swings the door open and automatically deploys the inflatable slide.
Even if the flight attendant had realized his mistake, it’s often too late to correct the situation – the power assist system will force the door open whether you want it to or not.
To add the drama onboard, the slide that deployed was the forward left-hand door, which is the one that is used to connect a jetbridge to.
As a result, the passengers were effectively stuck on board the plane until the engineers unhooked the slide from the plane, and then the jetbridge could be reattached to the side of the plane.
Emergency evacuation slides are not cheap. It’s estimated that a brand-new slide and assembly for even a smaller commercial jet like the Airbus A220 can cost between $50,000 and $70,000.
In some cases, the slide can be deflated and carefully repacked, but even that is a costly and time-consuming process that will command fees from the slide manufacturer of around $30,000.
These accidental incidents are known in the aviation industry as ‘Inadvertent slide deployments’, or ISDs, and while relatively rare, Airbus estimated that, at one point a few years ago, there were up to three ISDs occurring every single day.
ISDs are more likely to occur at the end of the flight when flight attendants are meant to disarm the door for arrival. Unfortunately, even with the famous ‘cross-checking’ process, this doesn’t always happen, and a flight attendant will open the door without realizing the door is still armed.
Accidentally deploying a slide on arrival can be incredibly dangerous, as a slide could hit a ground worker or cause serious damage to a jetbridge or ground service vehicle.
While the cross-check process is meant to prevent ISDs, on some aircraft, the flight attendant working at the front of the plane won’t actually have a buddy and is expected to cross-check their own work.
