Flight Attendant- Major Foul-Up (Not AA)
 

I have been flying for nearly 50 years and thought that I had seen just about every reason for a flight delay but I was wrong.

In any event, I was flying last Friday morning from MCO to ACY on Spirit.

Just before boarding there was much activity on the plane.

It seems that a flight attendant opened a rear exit door ( for catering or whatever) while the door was still "armed". This resulted in the evacuation slide being deployed.

Without going into all of the details, a new slide had to be flown from New York and it took over 8 hours for the repairs to be made and the flight to take off.

I know that stuff happens and people make mistakes but I have never heard of this happening before.

By the way the Spirit agent kept saying that compensation would be determined based on the length of the delay. It was decided that 8 hours was worth $100 off a future flight.

Finally, the new Spirit policy of charging for beverages was enforced, which went over very well.

[AA moderator note]

Tranferred to Spirit Airlines forum

Well if you checked the forums at usaviation.com you'd notice that slide deployments, while very expensive, are common. I'm glad that, in 50 years, you never experienced it. Those of us who fly frequently have. I'm glad all were safe.

It happended to me once several years ago when NWA still used the 747-200 from BOS to AMS.

It took several hours for them to do the repairs and they even had the part at BOS.

I remember hearing one of the flight attendants saying this was a serious offense and the flight attendant would get in lots of trouble.

Most airlines would let that kind of error slide. From now on it'll be downhill for that FA

No pun intended, of course:D;)

I did some research. It was a new hire FA. There was unexpected commotion and she lost her way. Unfortunately, she'll lose her job--it's a $50,000 slide. So, you got just compensation for your delay.

Jan 2007. The CX 747 had just pulled up to the gate in BKK from HKG - to continue onto SIN. As we stopped there was a loud noise and the upper deck slide went hurtling past my window (award ticket seat).

Interesting view of the bottom of the slide. Took them about an hour to disconnect the slide. The 3 continuing J passengers were moved to the F cabin and all boarding J passengers moved to the downstairs cabin.

The purser when queried about "additional training" for the guilty FA indicated probably not. Even said the two handles are next to each other......

Happy wandering

Fred

I don't know if the FAA regulation has changed but used to be an aircraft with an inoperative exit could be dispatched with passenger seats blocked from the inop exit half the cabin forward to the next exit and half the cabin aft to the next exit. I'm not sure if on a DC-9 or MD-80 an inop front entrance or front galley door would seating blocked from the 1st row to half way to the first overwing window exit or if only door exits figure into this rule so that only any seats aft of the rear galley door can be occupied.

Spirit must have had full loads with the aircraft out of MCO and on its flight back to the US that they preferred to replace the slide in an 8 hour delay than block seating and operate the aircraft.

A flight attendant friend had a slide pack drop out of a DC-10's 2L door into the jetbridge. It did not automatically inflate but the station was not a major one and it was late at night so a repacking repair was not possible. Half of the FC cabin forward of the door was blocked and half of the coach cabin aft to the overwing exit was unuseable. Thank God for them it was before AAdvantage elite upgrades became a thing of entitlement or all the displaced upgraders would have been rioting and arguing to delay the aircraft there for repair so they would not have to fly in a coach seat!