2 passengers at La Guardia Airport, dog slide out moving plane

He said he noticed a man and a woman with a large service dog nearby when Brian Plummer was sitting in the back of a Delta Air Lines plane preparing to take off from La Guardia Airport on Monday.

The flight to Atlanta was not fully loaded, Mr. Plummer said the pair changed seats several times.

The man and woman never settled in, and as the plane began to take a taxi on runway 462, the man stood up, disobeyed an air attendant’s sit-in order, and said he had a post-traumatic stress disorder. Plummer said.

Shortly afterwards, Mr. Plummer said, feeling the plane tremble. He did not immediately know why, but the flight crew told the passengers what had happened.

Authorities said the man opened the door of a cabin and activated the emergency slide, after which he, his girlfriend and their dog slipped out of the way of the plane.

The couple were in custody; It is unclear what charges they will face, if any, or whether they will be banned from flying with Delta in the future.

This is not the first time a panicked traveler has pulled such a maneuver at a New York area airport, but the New York and New Jersey Port Authority, which operates the Delta, FAA or La Guardia, could not say on Monday how unusual it was for someone to make such an escape.

“It doesn’t happen every day at the airport,” official spokeswoman Lenis Valens said.

Mr. Plummer said he noticed the plane standing still after exiting the gate. “They knew very well,” Mr. Plummer said of the couple.

The person told an air attendant that he could not sit down because of his post-traumatic stress disorder, Mr. Plummer said.

“If I sit down, I will leave,” said the man, mr. Plummer recalled.

The flight attendant again asked the man to take his seat, again he refused, Mr. Plummer said. Instead, he began to walk towards the front of the plane, Mr. Plummer lost sight of him.

The plane, which was scheduled to depart before 10 a.m., returned to Gate, and the rest of the passengers were “normally departed and put on alternate flights,” a Delta spokesman said. (Mr. Plummer said his departure was several hours late.)

Authorities said no one was injured in the episode. The whereabouts of the service dog were not immediately known.

The most famous example of an unauthorized slip-out occurred 10 years ago at Kennedy International Airport A Jet Blue flight attendant He said he was involved in a dispute with a passenger.

On that occasion, after announcing his intentions regarding the aircraft’s public address system, the flight attendant activated the emergency slide, slipped under the torque, and threw his dive to the ground as he walked.

Most recently, a passenger on a flight to Florida at Newark Liberty International Airport escaped from an inflated slide on the emergency exit route in February 2018 when the plane was at the gate. According to WNBC.

When authorities arrived to arrest him, the TV station reported that the man was screaming that he was not on the plane because it was not his plane.