Delta Air Lines Flight Attendants Makes $70,000 Mistake After Accidentally Setting Off Emergency Evacuation Slide
A 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.
Flight attendant said he was terribly sorry, no going home tonight
byu/SF-Coyote indelta
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.
In 2023, British Airways became so alarmed at a spike in ISDs occurring at the airline that it introduced the Japanese ritual of Shisa Kanko, in which workers in safety-critical roles point and call out what they are doing.
One study into the practice claimed that Shisa Kanko reduces human error by nearly 85%.
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Mateusz Maszczynski
Mateusz Maszczynski honed his skills as an international flight attendant at the most prominent airline in the Middle East and has been flying ever since… most recently for a well known European airline. Matt is passionate about the aviation industry and has become an expert in passenger experience and human-centric stories. Always keeping an ear close to the ground, Matt’s industry insights, analysis and news coverage is frequently relied upon by some of the biggest names in journalism.
