‘How???’: Delta Crew’s $20,000 Emergency Slide Mistake Strands Honolulu-Bound Passengers

Delta Air Lines flight 419 from Seattle to Honolulu was cancelled on Thursday night after a lengthy delay. The aircraft was finally pulled up to the gate, but crew accidentally deployed the emergency slide. No replacement aircraft was available for the Boeing 757.

How????
byu/purple539 indelta

The emergency slide deployment mechanism involves a handle near the door’s arm/disarm lever, and mistakes happen when not paying attention. It seems someone did not cross-check and ensure the slide was disarmed before opening the door. Replacing an accidental slide deployment can be expensive, certainly in the five figures. And accidental slide deployment can be dangerous to anyone in its path so hopefully there wasn’t anyone that it displaced.

This past spring an emergency exit slide detached from a Delta flight as it took off from New York JFK and the year before one ‘exploded’ inside a Delta Boeing 767 after the plane had diverted to Salt Lake City.

Here’s an emergency slide off of a United flight that fell from the sky into a man’s back yard. In 2019 an evacuation slide fell from a Delta flight as it landed in Boston.

And of all the things that might fall this is one of the better ones? A Utah woman who lives near the Salt Lake City airport claimed planes were dumping poop in her driveway. And in 2018 a fuel cap off a United plane fell from the sky. Toilet paper has fallen from the sky, and even once a flight attendant – who lived.

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 »

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Comments

  1. @Gary

    You have a typo. The incident affecting DL 419 on Thursday was a 767, not a 757. It’s also clear from the photo you linked at Reddit. Not to be a stickler, but… know your aircraft type, dawg!

  2. Probably an illegal immigrant trying to get off the plane before ICE could meet it. I bet we see more of this over the next four years.

  3. In 1967, TWA accepted fewer than three percent of its applicants—a lower acceptance rate than Harvard.

    Why have the top 3% of flight attendants seem to have migrated to AF, QR, EK, and NH? Is it too late to make America’s flight attendants intelligent again?

  4. Speaking from experience, the 767 door can be glitchy. The FA may “disarm” the door but the arming levers have not totally cleared the brackets. I don’t know…I wasn’t there…but there are other causes for this kind of occurance other than FA negligence.

  5. Uncle Jeff, do you think that Seattle-Honolulu is a prime flight for evasion of ICE by “illegal immigrants”, who would have been up front in business class in order to be at Door 1L upon arrival?

    I didn’t think so.

  6. @Eric

    You’re onto something. Maybe some of us shouldn’t automatically blame the workers, generally, like they often do. The ‘punch-down’ crowd sure likes to ignore the systemic problems, such as, a design flaw or that the average age of Delta’s 767s are practically ancient (20-30 years in service), and even with ideal maintenance, some parts just get old after awhile and fail (you know, like Uncle Jeff).

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