BA Pilot sets off emergency slide while on the ground

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  • Antitude
    Participant

    Last Friday I was taking a flight on British Airways between Santorini and London City on an Embraer 190 when the following happened. All of the passengers had boarded, the doors were shut, the stairs taken away and the crew announced “doors to automatic and cross-check”. All very normal. Moments later the Captain comes out of the cockpit, turns left to the front-right door and opens it. There is then a loud air-rushing, almost explosive, noise as he triggers the evacuation slide because the doors were already armed. The pilot jumps back, hands on his head with a look of shock on his face and then runs down the aisle calling after the lead cabin crew saying that the slide has gone off. Given it was quite a small plane everyone could see what had happened and the slide was visible outside the windows. There was then a lot of running around, eye-rolling by the cabin crew, and a sheepish announcement by the red-faced Captain. In the end, the engineers are called to remove the slide, deflate it and pack it up into the hold, and after a delay of 1.5 hours we were on our way.

    I fly quite a lot and have never heard of anything like this happening before, and neither had the cabin crew. Their comment was “we don’t go in there and touch his controls, he shouldn’t touch ours”. The incident raised a lot of questions in my mind, both about the Captain and whether we would be allowed to fly, but in the end I was just pleased the flight wasn’t cancelled and we reached our destination safely. It’s still unclear to me why the Captain opened the door in the first place and how he didn’t notice it was armed.


    Ktfarah
    Participant

    If I had witnessed what you did. I would have deplaned. Would not have flown with this captain. I hope BA will investigate the incident and the captain.


    MrMichael
    Participant

    I assume therefore the slide was replaced. Surely a plane cannot fly knowing one slide is inoperable, the OP does not mention replacement, just they put the used one in the hold.


    Transjet
    Participant

    There is a provision that one emergency evacuation slide may be inoperative or missing for a maximum of five flights in Embraer’s Master Minimum Equipment List for the Embraer 170/175/190/195 family. Assuming BA Cityflyer’s Minimum Equipment List, which may be more restrictive but never less restrictive than the Manufacturer’s Master, has the same provision, the flight could be dispatched. Since the exit would be considered inoperative BA CityFlyer would have had to apply their passenger number reduction and distribution policy for the flight.

    Inadvertent slide deployment incidents do occur from time to time – fortunately on this occasion there was no injury to ground personnel or damage to the aircraft or ground equipment. The ad-hoc situation which warranted the Captain opening the door after it had been armed for departure is unfortunately typical of the circumstances that result in this sort of event.


    mkcol74
    Participant

    [quote quote=707843]It’s still unclear to me why the Captain opened the door in the first place and how he didn’t notice it was armed.

    [/quote]

    I do hope he didn’t think it was the loo he was going into.


    mkcol74
    Participant

    [quote quote=707847]If I had witnessed what you did. I would have deplaned. Would not have flown with this captain. I hope BA will investigate the incident and the captain.

    [/quote]

    Why would you have done so @Ktfarah?

Viewing 6 posts - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
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