JetBlue is making changes to the announcements that pilots make to flight attendants before departure in an attempt to prevent crew members from accidentally activating the emergency slide following a reported marked increase in the number of ‘blown slides’ in recent months.
The New York-based carrier is certainly not alone in dealing with flight attendants blowing slides – what is technically known across the airline industry as an ‘inadvertent slide deployment’ or ISD for short.
Also they are changing to the more standard departure procedure to now say "Inflight Crewmembers, arm your doors, cross check, and standby for all call"
— JonNYC (@xJonNYC) July 29, 2026
One study carried out by the European aircraft manufacturer Airbus, which is the sole supplier of airplanes to JetBlue, found that, on average, three ISDs occur around the world every single day.
In the vast majority of incidents, ISDs are caused by crew fatigue or confusion, when flight attendants forget to disarm the slide before opening the cabin door after arriving at a destination.
British Airways has, however, had an issue with new-hire crew members accidentally activating the emergency slide while arming the door for departure. The rise in these ISD’s have left experts scratching their heads as to the root cause.
It would also appear that some of JetBlue’s recent ISD issues have also been connected with flight attendants, or what JetBlue calls ‘Inflight Crewmembers,’ arming doors for departure.
According to aviation insider JonNYC on X, JetBlue is changing its traditional door arming announcement from “prepare for departure” to a callout much closer to industry standard: “Inflight Crewmembers, arm your doors, cross check, and standby for all call.”
The idea behind this longer callout is to get flight attendants in the right frame of mind. Rather than going into autopilot, rushing through the process, and then accidentally blowing a slide, the longer announcement is a way to reset a crew member’s thinking – time to concentrate and do this one task properly.
JetBlue’s Airbus A220 aircraft are said to be particularly susceptible to ISDs, with a replacement slide for one of these aircraft costing as much as $70,000.
As an indication of just how easily an ISD can occur, last October, a Delta Air Lines flight attendant with more than 26 years of experience, armed the door of an A220 before mistakenly lifting the door handle.
Although the crew member realized their mistake pretty much straight away, it was already too late. The emergency power system activated, and the door flew open, inflating the emergency slide in the process.
The TWU 579 union has warned JetBlue that swapping crew members between different aircraft types mid-pairing (between different flights in the same trip) can cause confusion, which could lead to an increased number of ISDs.
The union acknowledges, however, that while it doesn’t agree with swapping crew members from one aircraft type to another in the same trip, that decision is the sole discretion of JetBlue.
I’d be interested to hear exactly which part of the door arming procedure is making the crew lift the door handle up. The A220 door is significantly different than the A320… the 220 has a swinging handle like the 737-type doors. The arming is a compartment separate from the door handle with a lever that slides up and down between red and green. The A320 is of course a different door mechanism with a handle lifting up/down to open/close and a different arm/disarm in the middle of the door. I almost would expect the slide deployments to be more so on the 320 as opening the door on the 320 is a very similar motion to disarming the 220 door.
I’m not casting blame or being facetious…. I’m genuinely curious the mechanics of what is happening.