ISLAMABAD – An international flight from Manchester, UK, to Islamabad in Pakistan was delayed by seven hours after a passenger mistakenly opened the emergency exit believing it was the toilet door.
The woman traveler opened the exit door in the Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) flight on June 7 and the plane automatically deployed the emergency slide, reported The Independent.
Flight PK702 was ready to leave Manchester for Islamabad on time at 9:20 p.m. on Friday but the incident delayed the flight by seven hours.
The Independent reported that the seatbelt sign was on but despite that, the passenger decided to use the toilet. She walked to the rear of the aircraft and, instead of opening the toilet door, opened the L5 door on the left side.
As a result, the passengers were deplaned and brought back to the terminal, where they waited until boarding the flight once again. In total, the plane took off from England around seven hours after its scheduled departure time.
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Cabin crew is generally seated at the exit openings but media reports don’t give any further details as to why they couldn’t prevent it.
Since the emergency slide was automatically deployed in error it needed to be replaced. PIA chose to fly and replace it at its home base.
This cut down the flight’s evacuation capacity so it couldn’t carry all the passengers from the original flight. Thirty-eight passengers volunteered to travel on a later flight.
“We regret the delay of PK771, which is an unfortunate consequence of the delay of PK702, caused due to a passenger opening the emergency door,” the airline said in a statement. “We strongly urge passengers to follow security instructions as such mishaps result in inconvenience of hundreds of other passengers.”
“All passengers were provided dinner. The offloaded passengers were provided with transportation and hotel accommodation and will be adjusted on the next available flight,” said a PIA spokesperson.
An emergency exit in a plane is meant for emergency situations.
AskThePilot.com says that the emergency door cannot be opened while the plane is in flight.
