At the gate this morning on a flight, the evacuation slide deployed (well, fell off) from the aircraft. I don't think it deployed, as we deplaned they were examining a pile of uninflated rubber over to the side of the jet bridge.

Anyone now why that would happen? It was an A319-100. I'd think that if they left the slides armed, then it should have inflated and damaged the jet bridge. Just curious if I'll see this in the next few days on Aviation Herald.

In other news, does anyone know how one gets a job testing airplane slides? Or even just for a weekend?!

Had a slide incident once at SMF a few years ago while I was waiting for a flight. Slide deployed because 1R was still armed and when the door was opened for the catering truck - BAM! Fortunately nobody was hurt but the aircraft had to be taken out of service. I asked a F/A about it when I boarded my flight (on a different carrier) and she told me that it was something like $10,000 to replace an accidentally deployed slide. And the in-flight crew on that aircraft had some 'splaining to do to their bosses...

In your example it sounds like the pack itself fell off the door but didn't deploy?

There is a difference between deploying and it just falling out of it's carrier. Falling out is not that uncommon, there are studies that show in issues involving the slides, it happens about 9% of the time, and it's usually related to installation and maintenance issues.

Because it was uninflated, I would assume it was not armed when it fell out. If it was armed, then that's another issue.

When I was at US, the slides on the 1R door on the DC-9s and MD-80s would occasionally drop out from the clamshell when catering slammed the door shut in a hurry. Sometimes this would freak out the people I was flying with , but there was no danger since they would only inflate when the tab was pulled. We would call maintenance, and they would come up and put it back in by using a slotted screwdriver to wedge the top of the clamshell back into the lip.

At least one time it fell out as we were on the taxiway in line for takeoff. I stuck my head in the cockpit to tell the captain I could get it back in using a piece of F silverware, saving a delay and missed connections for our customers by not having to go back to the gate. ^


You could become a FA and get to go to recurrent every year , although we just simulated deploying a slide. The only one I've ever seen inflated was the DC-9 / MD-80 tailcone simulator at the training center in PIT.

Sounds like that's the case, then. Didn't realize it could just come out like that, wouldn't that be an issue if it was needed? Or is there some mechanism that also keeps it attached to the aircraft when it's armed?