A Delta flight attendant is accused of accidentally opening an airplane’s emergency slide, causing a chaotic situation that led to some passengers spending the night in Salt Lake City.
That’s according to View From the Wing,which reported that the flight attendant, who was not named, “accidentally popped the slide on Delta flight 3248 from Pittsburgh to Salt Lake City” on Saturday, October 25, 2025.
- The New York Post reported that such a mistake can be costly. “Repacking an evacuation slide is a costly process,” the news site reported, adding that figures to do so “for the Airbus A220 models” are between $50,000 and $100,000.
- The mishap delayed the flight for four hours, according to View From the Wing.
- The account was initially posted on a Reddit thread, where people had a mixed reaction to the situation.
View From the Wing reported that the slide “auto‑deployed onto the ramp. Staff re-connected the jetbridge and passengers were offloaded.” A flight attendant told passengers that in his “26‑year career, never happened,” the site reported, adding that, while some passengers were stranded, others were likely rebooked through Atlanta.
A Photo Posted to Reddit Shows the Deployed Slide
A photo was posted to Reddit with a photo of the deployed slide and details of the alleged incident.
Passengers unloaded about the incident on a Reddit thread. “The flight attendant accidentally triggered the emergency slide. Everyone’s entire night just became a cluster (expletive). He did apologize and was quite flustered, cited over the 26 years of career, it never happened. Can someone explain how though? Shouldn’t it be something with quite a safety check for making this kind of mistake?” the original post says.
Some people defended the flight attendant in the Reddit thread, arguing that safety slides shouldn’t be too hard to deploy. “Slides do have to be easy to deploy in the event of a real emergency though. So putting too many steps in makes it a hazard,” wrote one.
Concurred a second person, “I struggle with opening the child safe cap on my mouth wash sometimes. We would all be dead if it were me and they had some similar mechanism on the emergency doors.”
But others were more critical. “This was 100% someone screwed up. They are very simple, if you try and open the door with the slide armed they deployed,” wrote another.
“A woman friend of mine made this mistake early in her flight attendant career. Needless to say she was fired and the mistake took a toll on her career,” wrote another person.
“On a legit note, I’m a crew member (not for delta) who has had to use the slide for training, they’re not as fun as you may think,” wrote another Reddit user. “They’re almost scary. I hope to make it my whole career without ever having to use one. There’s actually been minor injuries from them. You go down WAY faster than you may think, and there’s a possibility of going off the sides. But it’s better to have a minor injury from a slide than burn inside the plane.”
