An emergency slide on a British Airways Boeing 787-10 Dreamliner was accidentally deployed on Saturday, causing a delay for passengers and an estimated financial cost to the airline.
The aircraft, registered as G-ZBLA, was scheduled to fly from Montreal to London Heathrow. The evacuation slide inflated out of the left-hand side of the aircraft, landing on a catering vehicle parked nearby, according to FL360aero.
Ground and maintenance staff addressed the issue, which required the slide to be inspected and either repacked or replaced. As a result, the flight arrived in London two hours and 30 minutes late, subsequently impacting its next scheduled service to Newark.
British Airways issued an apology to customers for the delay. "Our teams worked hard to get them on their way as quickly as possible," a spokesperson said.
This is not the first time British Airways has experienced such an incident. Earlier this year, a similar event caused a three-hour delay for passengers on a flight from Heathrow to Washington D.C. when a crew member accidentally activated the emergency slide just moments before departure. Emergency services attended the scene, and passengers were held on the tarmac.
Last year, a British Airways flight from Heathrow to Brussels was cancelled after a staff member deployed the emergency slide. Passengers faced a three-hour wait before another aircraft was arranged for the flight to Belgium. In February 2024, a captain reportedly activated an emergency slide on a flight to Romania before takeoff, resulting in a significant delay and an estimated £50,000 cost to the airline.
These occurrences have been described by sources as 'brainless acts', with the cost of deploying an emergency slide estimated to be as high as £100,000.