Flyer Attempts to Smoke Cigarette, Open Emergency Exit at 38,000 Feet

A Lufthansa flight was forced to make an unscheduled landing after a disruptive passenger attempted to light a cigarette and open the rear door of the aircraft.

A Lufthansa passenger diagnosed as having a mental disorder allegedly forced a Munich Airport (MUC) to Vancouver International Airport (YVR) flight to divert to Hamburg Airport (HAM) on Sunday after the captain became concerned about the man’s increasingly erratic behavior. The unruly flyer reportedly tried to smoke a cigarette during the flight and caused a loud disturbance before attempting to open the rear emergency exit door of the Airbus A340-642 aircraft.

“It was reported that there was a man in the back of the plane screaming and yelling and apparently tried to open the back door of the aircraft at 38,000 feet,” Dan Iosch, a passenger on the flight told CBC News. “Apparently at the beginning of the flight he was being a little difficult, but they decided to take off. I guess once we got in the air he got more and more agitated and he tried to light up a cigarette. He was yelling and screaming.”

Though it is physically impossible to open the exit doors of a commercial aircraft while the plane is in flight, the dubious intent exhibited by attempting to open an emergency exit at 30,000 feet is very often enough to cause crews to divert the plane to an airport where the offending passenger can be removed. Police and medics, including a doctor, were waiting for the flight when it landed. The agitated passenger was reportedly removed from the plane by police, but was taken quickly to a nearby medical facility after the responding physician diagnosed the man with an undisclosed mental disorder. According to FlightRadar24, because the flight, in this case, was at the very beginning of a 10-hour trans-Atlantic trip, the plane circled over the North Sea to burn fuel before making the unscheduled stop at HAM.

[Photo: Dan Iosch]