How a passenger opened an airplane's emergency hatch, mistaking it for a toilet (6 photos)

It was necessary to manage to confuse the door to the toilet with the door of the emergency exit, and even manage to open it! Truly nothing can stop a person who is in dire need!





Emergency exit door.

This incident happened on Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) Flight 702, which was supposed to take passengers from Manchester (UK) to Islamabad (Pakistan). One of the passengers, tormented by powerful urges and craving urgent emptying, opened the emergency exit of the plane, thinking that this was the door to the coveted closet.

After opening the emergency hatch, the evacuation system was activated, and the plane threw out an inflatable ladder.



Fortunately, a disaster was avoided, and the passengers were not “sucked out” of the plane, and no one suffocated from lack of oxygen. After all, the airliner was just preparing for takeoff and was on the ground.

However, all passengers had to be evacuated, and the plane had to be re-prepared for flight. The delay on that flight was an unfortunate seven hours.





Boeing airlines

As a matter of fact, if a suffering passenger tried to open the emergency hatch in flight, nothing would have worked. After all, firstly, this exit, intended for the evacuation of people, is blocked before takeoff.

And secondly, even if you turn off the lock, you won’t be able to physically open this door during the flight. Outside the plane the pressure is low, and the hatch opens towards itself. The pressure difference between inside and outside simply would not allow the emergency exit to be opened.



And even if a whole group of passengers had gathered, wanting to urgently get to the “toilet”, and they had jointly tried to open this “portal”, then in this case they would not have succeeded. The force required for this is several tons.

But on the ground, when the pressure inside and outside the plane is the same, opening the hatch is very easy. This was clearly demonstrated at Manchester Airport. And not only there. Passengers all over the world open emergency hatches on airplanes with enviable regularity: some are hot, while others have confused them with a toilet.



For me personally, two points remained unclear in this whole story. First point. Why didn’t the other passengers stop their brother who was breaking into the “toilet”? Maybe it was the first time in his life that he was on an airplane and had no idea what the door to the airplane closet looked like.

Or maybe he was already gurgling in his ears, and he didn’t care which door to relieve himself behind. But the rest saw that he was rushing somewhere in the wrong direction. Or did you just want to see how it would end?



Second point. So did this passenger manage to “tie his horse” or “dump the ballast”? Or did a small personal “catastrophe” happen? The incident report says nothing about this!