One dangerous option to flee from an arrest is to open a Boeing 737 emergency exit. Such is what happened on Sun Country Airlines flight on July ninth, when a 44-year-old man decided jumping out of the plane in Minneapolis would help him evade arrest.
The escape attempt
Sun Country Airlines flight SY346 made a comparatively on-time flight arrival from Orlando International Airport (MCO) to Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport (MSP) using a Boeing 737-800, registered N815SY. Nevertheless, one passenger onboard was particularly eager to get off and decided to open an emergency exit at MSP. This was after, in line with KARE 11 and KSTP-TV, the 44-year-old man learned law enforcement was waiting on the gate to execute arrest warrants for suspicion of felony domestic assault, drug dealing, trespassing, and felony violating a no-contact order, amongst more charges.
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The passenger opened the emergency exit, scampered onto the 737-800 wing, and jumped off. Nevertheless, this only bought him 40 minutes, when airport staff found him hiding inside an airline food service truck and promptly handed him over to law enforcement.
In an announcement, Sun Country Airlines said of the incident,
Unruly passenger rate still of concern
This incident has been included within the FAA’s unruly passenger measured risk rate, which currently stands at 1.7 incidents per every 10,000 flights. Law enforcement and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) remain concerned concerning the growth in unruly passenger incidents, despite the fact that numbers have fallen substantially since 2021.
Photo: Joshua Kupietzky / Easy Flying
As of June twenty fifth, the 12 months has had 890 incidents from unruly passengers. Meanwhile, the FAA handles a mean of 45,000 each day flights. So the danger is moderately small that your flight may have an unruly passenger onboard, but one incident is one incident too many, and nearly 4 each day is a cause for concern.
Many such incidents are referred to the Federal Bureau of Investigation for investigation and referral to US Assistant Attorneys General for prosecution. Yes, when you break the law in flight you risk jail time, fines, and most actually a lifetime ban for flying on the airline, all a part of the FAA’s Zero Tolerance approach adopted post-pandemic.
Why refrain from opening the emergency exits when on the gate?
While we’re all the time instructed to never touch an aircraft door handle unless an evacuation is ordered, that is for some key reasons. First, an airport tarmac is a busy place with airplanes and ground vehicles moving about. The creator went on a photographic project at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and might attest to this. It is vitally easy to get in the way in which of airplanes or airport personnel moving about with heavy equipment, meaning communication and awareness is vital.