PITTSBURGH, PA —The slide on a Delta Airlines flight from Pittsburgh to Salt Lake City accidentally was triggered on Saturday, delaying passengers on the plane for hours and costing the airliner tens of thousands of dollars.
According to the aviation news site aviationa2z.com, a crew member with 26 years of experience mistakenly lifted the door handle after arming it for departure. That triggered the automatic deployment of the forward left-hand slide — the same door used for the jetbridge connection.
Passengers were trapped onboard until engineers manually detached the slide and reconnected the a bridge to the gate.
The aviation new site reported that the evacuation slides are costly, with replacements for smaller jets like the Delta A220 valued between $50,000 and $70,000.
The International Business Times reported that in addition to replacement costs, Delta incurred expenses for maintenance inspections, delay-related compensation, and the repositioning of crew and passengers.
Industry analysts note that the overall disruption could have pushed the total financial impact close to six figures once operational losses and scheduling adjustments were included.
For example, numerous passengers then misconnected in Salt Lake City and got stuck spending the night there, although some would have wound up getting re-booked especially through Atlanta, a Delta hub.
Delta has not issued a statement on the incident.