A man has been arrested by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) after he shoved other passengers out of the way to open an overwing emergency exit of a Jetstar Airbus A320 aircraft while it was parked at the gate at Melbourne Airport on Thursday morning.
The unnamed suspect was reportedly displaying ‘weird energy’ according to another passenger on Jetstar flight JQ507, which had just arrived in Melbourne following a one-and-a-half-hour flight from Sydney.
Rather than experiencing any delays or problems, the flight had actually arrived in Melbourne several minutes early and had pulled up to the gate with passengers already preparing to disembark when the man lunged for the overwing emergency exit.
The suspect wasn’t even sitting in the emergency exit row and had to shove past another passenger in order to pull the emergency exit handle that deployed an overwing evacuation slide.
After deploying the slide, the man jumped on the aircraft wing and clambered down to the tarmac below by hanging off the engine.
Once on the ground, workers from the ground handling company Menzies detained the man while waiting for the AFP to arrive at the scene.
“We can confirm that a passenger opened the emergency exit door after arrival into Melbourne, which automatically deployed the slide. The plane was parked at the gate at the time,” a Jetstar spokesperson said on Thursday.
The statement continued: “The passenger has been arrested by the AFP. We thank our passengers for their patience and understanding while our team assisted the AFP to manage this incident.”
The man’s motives remain unclear.
In a statement, the AFP said the man had to be transported to hospital for assessment. It’s understood that the man injured his man as he made his way down off the aircraft.
The 11-year-old aircraft had to be taken out of service for the remainder of Thursday.
