A nervous passenger who let their fear of flying get the better of them opened the emergency exit of an Iberia Express plane that was preparing to depart from Ibiza Airport on Wednesday afternoon, leading to tense scenes onboard as other passengers became increasingly wiled at the delay.
The incident occurred on Iberia Express flight IB1696, which was due to depart the idyllic Balearic Isle at around 1:30 pm on December 11 for the short 40-minute hop to Madrid.
After all the passengers had boarded, the doors had been closed and locked, and the flight attendants had armed the emergency exits for departure, the nervous passenger suddenly decided that they needed to get off the plane.
The passenger rushed to the forward left-hand door of the Airbus A321neo aircraft, pulling up the emergency door handle and, in doing so, activating the emergency slide.
Flight attendants managed to stop the passenger from jumping on the slide, while Iberia maintenance rushed to the plane to see whether they could fix the slide.
Other passengers, however, soon started arguing with the flight attendants as they remained stuck onboard the plane as the delay dragged on. In the end, the Guardia Civil had to be called to restore calm before the passengers were bussed back to the terminal building.
Unfortunately, Iberia eventually decided that the fix wouldn’t be a quick one and decided to axe the service, rebooking passengers onto alternative flights.
Commercial passenger planes don’t necessarily have to take off with all of the emergency exits in operation and on occasion, airlines are forced to block off an exit due to a maintenance issue.
In fact, similar incidents involving emergency slides being accidentally deployed don’t always lead to the flight being canceled.
There are, however, specific rules that have to be followed, such as a restriction on the number of passengers allowed onboard, as well as briefing passengers as to which exits aren’t operational.
