A British Airways new hire cost his new employer £50,000 after inadvertently deploying an emergency plane slide on a 777 jet. Talk about an egregious first day on the job!
Rookie Error: British Airways Flight Attendant Incurs £50,000 In Expenses During First Day On Job After Accidental Slide Deployment
When the purser announces, “Arm doors and cross-check” it means that the plane is ready to depart and the doors are set such that if opened, an inflatable slide will automatically deploy that can be used for egress.
While differences in pressures between inside the plane and outside the plane prevent any aircraft door from being opened in-flight, while the plane is on the ground one can still open the aircraft door. When armed, even inadvertently opening the door will trigger the deployment of the slide.
This is what happened on BA75 from London (LHR) to Lagos, Nigeria (LOS) on Friday, January 13, 2023. A brand new flight attendant on his very first flight somehow managed to open the emergency exit door, thus unleashing the slide and also unleashing a cascade of expenses and delays for his employer.
The slide cannot simply be deflated and put back in place. There is a complex mechanism that enables it to rapidly inflate and with no easy fix (the slide cannot be re-used), the plane was forced out of service.
JUST IN
A British Airways Boeing 777-200ER (G-VIIK) was pushing back whilst the emergency slide had opened
More updates to follow#aviation
Photo Credit – Ham pic.twitter.com/ZSJpPHX8Rf
— M Zulqarnain B (@MZulqarnainBut1) January 13, 2023
British Airways commendably found another aircraft and was able to (relatively) quickly get the flight on its way with the same crew–minus the rookie.
The UK Sun reports the young man was not fired but was demoted back to training. His mistake is thought to have cost British Airways about £50,000 when factoring in that the mishap caused a four-hour delay, including a missed takeoff slot, ruined slide, compensation for the passengers onboard, and additional duty pay for the other members of the flight crew.
A British Airways spokesperson explained:
“The aircraft returned to stand and customers disembarked normally. We apologized to customers for the inconvenience caused, provided them with refreshment vouchers, and arranged a replacement aircraft so that they could continue their journey as planned.”
Oh shute! What a tragic unforced error.
CONCLUSION
A rookie flight attendant had quite a first day on the job. After inadvertently deploying the emergency slide, he now has slid back to training. Meanwhile, British Airways handled the situation as well as could be expected, getting passengers to Lagos only about four hours late. I bet that’s a mistake that the flight attendant will never make again!
image: @MZulqarnainBut1 / Twitter
Slides absolutely can be reused. They have to be deflated, tested, repacked, re-certified and reinstalled, but they can be reused after that is done.
Believe it or not, it costs approximately $10,000 for Maintenance to do this, besides the aircraft being out of service, loss of revenue, etc.
Oh believe me, I know. I’ve had to sign off on the cost of those replacements a few times. At least this happened at maintenance base – if it happened at an outstation, there would be a pax penalty on the return flight to base as well.
Opening an exit door on a 777 is not something you accidently do. Even most of the least traveled passenger would have a better sense. I guess the person’s training performance comes into play but I’d think twice about putting this person back on a plane. Maybe a diversity hire?
This is something that I’m also having a hard time understanding…you don’t just accidentally open a 777’s door. Like, it requires a fair amount of effort beyond opening, say, a door to a bedroom. Especially when you’re not at a gate and you can clearly see apron/tarmac out the window and NOT a jetway given they appear to be at door 3L. I’d agree that this FA shouldn’t be allowed back on a plane at all, let alone after “training”.
Such an insult to the people with diverse background. How can a blogger allow for such a comment is a mystery to me
What filth you are for making an assumption like that.
Classic chud move to try and make this about identity politics
Oh dear, a Trump supporter.
Yay!!! Congrats on finding a way to make it a out Trump.
Hows that Bidenflation treating you lol.
Diversity is just only so much feel-good politics when in actuality it’s just more modern-day bs. You only hire GOOD people based on MERIT and INTELLIGENCE. ‘Diversity’, ‘inclusion’, and ‘equity’ are only buzzwords that chiefly result in ‘MEDIOCRITY”.’
“I wonder what this button does….”
Back to school!!! How these people get approved to be FAs? Guy was probably on his phone posting about his first day at work. What a generation!!!!
Well, shute happens. But perhaps they need to find an airport based job for this dude. Not sure all the training in the world can teach someone common sense/
David’s comment is offensive.
This is clearly insufficient training. BA handled it right by sending the employee back to training, but you also have to wonder what he was trained on.
You’re in denial if you don’t understand some people are hired based on things like their gender, skin color, or who they sleep with. Our own president chose his running mate based on her skin color and genitalia. The voting public judge her unqualified and she did not receive a single delegate in the primaries. Yet someone ol Joe found her qualified to be a heartbeat away from leader of the free world. Clearly the public saw her correctly.
Ease off the saber-rattling there. The assumption that all diversity results in incompetence (or that all incompetent people must be a “diversity hire”) is insane. If I had a dime for every white boomer man I work with who can’t figure out how to work their iPhone or create a PDF, I’d be able to retire young and save myself from overhearing constant whinging about how “diversity hires” are ruining the workplace.
Clearly you will use any public forum to express your hatred for the Democrats. This topic is about a BA-FA opening an aircraft door and deploying the slide. You need to stay on point David. 2024 is next yr. Hopefully your sides wins in a landslide, and the World gets to watch your side handle your Country. Looking forward to 2024.
And yet you clearly have your own positive bias towards Orange-Americans, no matter how much mouth breathing they do…pot meet kettle
David is spot on. This is an objective observation. Kamala Harris IS pretty much just a feel-good decoration. Since taking office, she has shown herself to be clearly in way over her head and just plainly unqualified. I pretty much thought Trump was the worst President we’ve had in a long time. The man just can’t keep his mouth shut and blabbers the most insane lies. But having watched Biden in action now for a couple of years, he is worse than Trump. He panders to whatever the day’s supplicants complain about. Biden should have hung up his hat a long time ago, collected his pension, and found a comfortable geriatric home to enjoy. Trump and Biden. Is this the best our country can come up with to be our leaders?
It’s BA, training is cut to the bone to be the minimum legal so never have great expectations of anything they do.
Ooops.
Boy, British Airways must really be having a hard time recruiting flight attendants if this guy wasn’t fired on the spot – which is what absolutely would have happened at any of the three airlines I flew with over the course of 30 years! Blowing a slide can be extremely dangerous. When I was flying for Northwest Airlines, a company mechanic was killed inside a jetway when he opened a 747 cabin door that had not been disarmed.
BA are really struggling to recruit at the moment. They haven’t yet realised that people won’t work all the hours and shifts of the day for the minimum wage when Lidl close by the LHR pays far more. This is while of course executive bonuses are still eye watering and shareholder payouts are huge. The days of slave labour at BA are over but they haven’t yet realised it.
A mate who used to be a long haul purser and who was made redundant because of Covid is asked weekly to return – for less than 30% of what he was earning and they can’t understand why he won’t.
G-VIIK?!
I have been on that plane!
That plane also had a death in DEN when a refueling hose disconnect and hit the ground, causing a spark. It caught the spilled fuel on fire, which killed the man refueling the plane.
Ugh.
Yea, you are completely full of it. You can put a cigarette out in Jet A-1 and it will not light. A spark from dropping a non-ferrous fuel nozzle certainly won’t ignite it. Go seek attention through lies somewhere else, like a burning building.
Actually derek is correct. This BA 777-200ER was being refueled in DEN when the fuel hose came loose spraying the refueler and then somehow he caught on fire. I’ve attached an incident report if you’re interested. RIP
https://planecrashmap.com/plane/co/G-VIIK/
His first flight ever was a 777 to Lagos?! I think some of the blame might be on BA here. Those mixed crews really are inexperienced.
Penultimate paragraph you said it cost a “missed take off slide”, I think you meant “slot”.
David-some truth to COmma-La for sure
“While differences in pressures between inside the plane and outside the plane prevent any aircraft door from being opened in-flight”
Aren’t these doors opening outwards and the low pressure at high altitude makes it easier to open them?
No.
To clarify Matthew’s “no”, the reason is that the doors need to be pulled inward against the interior high pressure before they can swing outwards. They don’t just open outward like a car door. That’s also why the door handle is so big. Most FAs require both hands to pull the door in before turning it and pushing out
If it was a simple push out, they’d just need a small handle and then put their body weight against the door.
A few years ago I was sitting in 1A when an AA flight attendant forgot to disarm the door of a 737-800 upon arrival of early AM flight from SAT to DFW. Not funny for him but the 50 or so people who gathered around on the tarmac thought it was hilarious. About 25 minute delay getting off, fortunately my connection had ample time.
Sounds like a communications and supervision failure. Good job it happened at the UK end of the route! Dread to think of the cost of sourcing and positioning another 777.
The doors open outwards and pressure inside the plane is higher than pressure outside so why can’t the doors be opened in flight?
Because the door is bigger than it’s frame.
Did BA let passengers slide on out of the plane?
Wheeeeee…..
Inquiring minds want to know
“My bad,” he said.
I like this blog quite a bit and I’m a regular reader. That said, I feel like the editing of the political comments above – or lack thereof – is telling me more about Matthew’s own proclivities then I wanted to know.
*than