Delta Flight Attendant Makes $100,000 Mistake—Blows Evacuation Slide, Stranding Passengers Overnight

A flight attendant accidentally popped the slide on Delta flight 3248 from Pittsburgh to Salt Lake City on Saturday. You can see the Airbus A220 at Pittsburgh’s gate D2, and the flight wound up delayed four hours, from 5:30 p.m. to 9:11 p.m.

The 1L boarding door was opened while armed, so the slide auto‑deployed onto the ramp. Staff re-connected the jetbridge and passengers were offloaded. It then took “about an hour” to disconnect and remove the slide. Meanwhile, a flight attendant apologized saying that in her “26‑year career, never happened.”

Numerous passengers then misconnected in Salt Lake City and got stuck spending the night there, although some would have wound up getting re-booked especially through Atlanta.

Flight attendant said he was terribly sorry, no going home tonight
byu/SF-Coyote indelta

After the “arm doors for departure” call a flight attendant would have opened the 1L door from the inside, e.g. to ‘re-secure’ or check the door, with the arming level still in ARMED or not fully up. That causes the slide to auto-deploy onto the tarmac.

In an emergency, you want “open door = slide goes” with zero extra steps. Adding friction increases evacuation risk. That’s a design tradeoff that’s intentionally made to increase likelihood of quick exit in an emergency. Opening the door from the outside auto‑disarms, but opening from inside while armed deploys the slide. So an inadvertent deployment at the gate usually means someone opened 1L from the inside while armed.

Repacking and repairing can cost $20,000 while the total event cost to the operation, including hotels, crew, and repositioning, can be a six figure expense.