Passenger opens emergency slide – and jumps out of the plane

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A plane is on the tarmac at Los Angeles Airport on Saturday, waiting for the signal to take off. That doesn’t happen: Suddenly one of the plane’s emergency exits pops open and a man slides down onto the tarmac. A few minutes later, the police and fire brigade are on the scene. The man is arrested.

The plane was a Delta Airlines machine. “We never felt in danger,” an eyewitness later told NBC. “It was just the most bizarre thing I’ve ever seen.”

He said, “What should I do now?”

The woman was on that plane—a Boeing 737, according to CNN—when it all started: “The man was obviously excited or nervous or upset about something,” she describes the observed situation. Before he left, he suddenly ran to an emergency exit. When instructed by the flight crew to return to his seat, he did not listen to her and simply replied, “What do I do now?”

Then he turned to the emergency exit and reached for the door. “You can’t open the door,” the flight attendant shouted repeatedly and tried to grab the man – in vain. “Within seconds” the man did just that: open the door and out, down the slide.

After the action, however, he did not get far: after he had left the plane in this spectacular way, the woman watched as the police led the man away in handcuffs.

Taken to hospital for psychiatric evaluation

As the airline reports, “Delta” personnel initially detained the passenger until local police arrived on the scene. According to the police, the FBI was also aware of the incident. The aircraft then returned to the gate and the flight’s passengers transferred to another aircraft to continue their journey.

It is not yet clear why the man was involved in the unexpected action. A police spokeswoman said they had taken him to a local hospital for a psychiatric evaluation. (mel)

Source: Blick