Flight attendants on a flight from Madrid to the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, scrambled on Saturday to restrain a man who leaped up from his seat and tried to open the emergency exit of the Airbus A330 widebody jet as it flew high above the Atlantic Ocean.
Dramatic eyewitness video captured the moment that passengers cried out in terror as the man was wrestled away from the exit by flight attendants and several good samaritans.
The terrifying incident occurred on a flight operated by Spanish airline Plus Ultra, which operates regularly scheduled flights from its hub in Madrid to Latin America, as well as charter and wet-lease services on behalf of other airlines.
On this occasion, the flight was a scheduled service for Plus Ultra and was not being operated for another airline, and despite the horrifying turn of events the flight ended up landing in Caracas ahead of schedule on March 1.
It’s still unclear what brought the man to attempt to open the emergency exit, although his chances of succeeding were pretty much nil.
Once modern aircraft like the Airbus A330 have reached an altitude of around 10,000 feet, the difference between the internal cabin pressure and the outside air pressure effectively seals the doors shut, meaning that any attempt to open the door at cruising altitude would be fruitless.
Some aircraft also have a special speed or flight lock feature that mechanically locks the door shut after the aircraft reaches a certain speed, effectively making it impossible to open the cabin door as the aircraft speeds for takeoff to the point at which it has slowed down on the runway after landing.
That’s not to say, however, that it’s always impossible to open an aircraft emergency exit inflight.
Perhaps the most famous example of this occurred in 2023 when a passenger sitting by an emergency exit on an Asiana Airlines Airbus A321 managed to open the door as the plane was making its final approach for landing.
In this case, the aircraft had dropped to a low enough altitude that there was no longer a significant enough pressure differential between the inside of the cabin and the outside for the door to be effectively held in place.
Late last year, a man was restrained on a Korean Air flight from Bangkok to Seoul after he attempted to open the emergency exit of the Airbus A330 at a cruising altitude of 37,000 feet.
Again, the flight attendants leaped into action and managed to pull the man away from the exit and restrain him. He was later taken into custody.
