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Delta Air Lines flight DL3248 from Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT) to Salt Lake City International Airport (SLC) faced a major delay yesterday evening after a flight attendant accidentally deployed the aircraft’s emergency evacuation slide at the gate. The incident occurred on an Airbus A220 and resulted in a four-hour delay as crews worked to deflate and remove the slide before departure.
Flight attendant said he was terribly sorry, no going home tonight
byu/SF-Coyote indelta
The aircraft was parked at Gate D2 at Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT) when the forward left-hand door (known as the 1L door) was opened while still armed for departure. On modern aircraft, arming a door readies the emergency slide for immediate use in the event of an evacuation. Opening the door from the inside while armed automatically triggers the slide to deploy. Because the arming lever remained in the armed position, the slide instantly inflated and deployed onto the ramp outside the aircraft. The jet bridge had to be reattached so passengers could be safely offloaded while maintenance teams handled the deflation process.
While no one was injured, the mistake came with a hefty price tag. Repacking or replacing an emergency evacuation slide can cost anywhere from tens of thousands of dollars depending on the damage. The broader operational impact, including crew delays, hotel costs for passengers who missed connections as well as repositioning expenses, can push the total cost into six figures.
For Delta, the disruption was particularly painful because the slide that deployed was located at the primary boarding door connected to the jet bridge, which effectively trapped passengers on board until engineers could detach the inflated chute and restore access. The flight, originally scheduled to depart at 5:30 PM, took off at 9:11 PM. This caused many passengers missing onward connections to spend the night.
Anthony’s Take: While Delta’s accidental slide deployment was an embarrassing and expensive mishap, it serves as a reminder of how safety-first systems can cause major disruptions when triggered at the wrong time.
(Featured Image Credit: @SF-Coyote via Reddit.)
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Advertiser & Editorial Disclosure: The Bulkhead Seat earns an affiliate commission for anyone approved through the links above This compensation may impact how and where links appear on this site. We work to provide the best publicly available offers to our readers. We frequently update them, but this site does not include all available offers. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed, or approved by any of these entities.
