Passenger Couldn’t Face Flying United, Pops Slide and Flees During Boarding at Newark

by Gary Leff

A passenger onboard United’s flight UA1640 from Newark to Tampa popped the emergency slide and went down and off the aircraft last night while they were still at the gate.

25-year-old Troy Fattun went to the back of the plane while boarding was still underway, opened the exit door, and went for it. He was quickly arrested, and the flight was delayed for five hours.

Here’s video from inside the aircraft after after emergency responders turned up:

To be sure there’s something amazing about going down the emergency slide. There’s the United flight attendant who popped the slide and walked off a 737 in an homage to jetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater. Last summer a teenager popped the slide and went for the tarmac in San Francisco. A woman in China tried it just because she was curious and another did it accidentally looking for the lavatory.


Still others used the technique to avoid capture by authorities and another United passenger was just tired of waiting for a gate.

I can sympathize, but this never ends well.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

More articles by Gary Leff »

Comments

  2. I’ve never understood the gameplan, unless the person is just suffering from a severe case of claustrophobia or something. Maybe I don’t understand airports as well as I think I do, but I would expect once you get out of the airplane you would effectively be trapped in a large prison yard with security and/or law enforcement at virtually every exit and walls/fences heavily fortified, covered in barbed wire, etc. The best you could do is, what, hope to find a hiding place that nobody saw you sneak into and lay low for several hours until you eventually sneak out and hope all of the passenger manifests were lost so there aren’t authorities waiting for you when you get to your home?

  3. Wait…if they were still boarding, won’t the door just open without the slide? I thought that’s what they do when they get on the phone and do that cross check armed for blah blah thing during like pushback. No?

Comments are closed.