United Airlines Flight Makes Emergency Landing After Slide Deploys Midflight

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You never want to be a in a situation where the inflatable emergency exit slide on your airplane deploys, as its “emergency exit” name implies there is an emergency and you should be exiting. But what about when that slide is the emergency?

That was the dilemma facing the passengers and crew of a United Airlines flight from Chicago to Orange County, CA, on Sunday night, when one of the plane’s exit slides deployed in midflight, forcing the plane to make an emergency landing in Wichita, Kansas.

“I heard a kind of loud pop and hissing noise,” one passenger tells the Wichita Eagle. “I turned around to the back and that slide that would normally go outside the plane so you can slide down in an emergency had for some odd reason deployed inside the plane while we were flying. Fortunately nobody was back there.”

In case you’re wondering, they exited the plane via a portable stairway instead of down a slide.

No one was injured but the incident — the cause of which is currently unknown — threw a huge wrench in the travel plans of the nearly 100 passengers on board the flight.

“It took off on time but it sure didn’t land on time,” said the passenger. “My theory about flying is any landing you walk away from is a good one.”