A Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) flight from Manchester, England to Islamabad faced a seven-hour delay on Friday night after a passenger somehow mistook the emergency exit for a toilet. The female passenger onboard Friday night’s PIA flight PK702 inadvertently opened the exit while the plane was on the ground at Manchester airport – because the exit was ‘armed’ the emergency slide was automatically deployed.
It’s not entirely clear how the woman mistook the emergency exit for a toilet. As a reminder, this is the what a Boeing 777 door looks like…
As you can see, in order to open the door you have to pull the lever up and over 18o degrees. It takes quite some effort to pull the lever but once you’ve completed this movement, an emergency system automatically takes over and pushes the door out into the open position, causing the slide to deploy.
If the door had not been ‘armed’ then the slide would not deploy and the door would only open if pushed outwards.