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It was a slip-up and slide.
It’s not just rogue passengers who are activating the emergency chute. A bumbling British Airways crew member cost the airline $122,000 after accidentally deploying a plane’s emergency slide.
“This error is not easy to achieve,” a source told the Sun while recounting the epic gaffe, which occurred Monday aboard an Airbus A321 that was on the ground at Heathrow Airport in London.
The plane had been waiting to take passengers to Brussels, Belgium, when an unnamed crew member inadvertently activated the chute.
The premature evacuation measure knocked the airplane out of service, forcing passengers to wait for three hours while the carrier located another aircraft to take them to their destination.
It also cost the airline a pretty penny. “It’s a minimum £100,000 [$121,816] mistake,” revealed the source.
They said that the error “beggars belief” because “staff are trained to know the basics.”
British Airways representatives addressed the incident in a statement.
“We apologized to customers for the delay, and our teams worked hard to arrange a replacement aircraft so customers were able to travel with us as planned,” they said.
This isn’t the first time a bungling British Airways crew member has accidentally released the chute.
Last year, a Bucharest, Romania-bound flight was grounded in London just before takeoff after the captain activated his jet’s emergency slide, the Sun reported.
In 2023, a rookie flight attendant landed in the hot seat after accidentally deploying the inflatable slide while the plane was taxiing.
Emergency crews scrambled toward the aircraft — thinking it was about to be evacuated — before realizing it was a false alarm.
As a result, passengers were delayed for around four hours.
