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A United Airlines Boeing 767 lost one of its emergency slides in mid-air today as it was approaching Chicago O’Hare International Airport (ORD). It fell from the plane into the backyard of a home near the airport.
CNN reported that the Chicago Police Department responded to the incident on the city’s Far Northwest Side. According to police, plane debris had fallen into a backyard and slightly damaged a home in the 4700 block of North Chester near Lawrence Avenue and Cumberland Avenue.
Patrick Devitt, a neighbor of the home where the emergency slide fell, described the scene:
They were just having lunch upstairs in our unit and they just heard a loud boom and I guess it hit the side of the building. The only thing that we were worried about at the beginning was like, oh yeah, it’s real loud, stuff like that and you get used to it, but you never think that something like that is going to happen.”
Maintenance workers discovered an emergency evacuation slide was missing from United Airlines flight UA12 that had just landed from Zurich, Switzerland according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The plane landed safely and on time. The FAA is investigating how this occurred.
This isn’t the first time a plane has lost one of its emergency slides in flight. In December 2019, a Delta Air Lines Boeing 767-300 was approaching Boston Logan International Airport (BOS) when an emergency slide fell from the aircraft. Luckily, no one was hurt during that incident either.
Anthony’s Take: I didn’t know that emergency slides could deploy with the door closed. Apparently, the 767 stores it outside of the door and that is how this was able to happen without impacting the inside of the cabin. I’m glad that no one was injured and that the plane landed safely.
(Featured Image: Patrick Devitt via CNN Travel.)
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1 comment
May be was a overwing slide that is storage outside in the center fuselage