A flight attendant had to be rushed to the hospital on Monday afternoon after she was seriously injured when she fell from the open door of a Boeing 737, which was preparing for departure at East Midlands Airport in England.
Accident investigators have opened a probe into the incident on December 16, which occurred when TUI Airways flight BY7158 was preparing to depart to the popular winter sun destination of Lanzarote in the Canary Islands.
The East Midlands Ambulance Service scrambled to the scene at around 4:30 pm on Monday and rushed the flight attendant to the Queens Medical Centre in Nottingham.
Witnesses who were onboard the plane said that everyone had boarded and all the doors had been closed in preparation for departure when the flight attendant had to reopen one of the main boarding doors.
The young woman expected the mobile airstairs to be attached to the side of the plane and went to step out onto the platform. By this point, however, the airstairs had been driven away, and the flight attendant plunged to the tarmac below.
The flight attendant’s injuries were so serious that the local ambulance service dispatched an air ambulance to the scene, along with a rapid response solo responder and a normal emergency ambulance.
The Air Accidents Investigation Branch has confirmed that it has launched an investigation after sending investigators to the scene to interview the other crew involved in the incident.
In 2020, a Finnair flight attendant was seriously injured after he fell from the open door of an Airbus A320 aircraft that had just landed at Helsinki Airport after the mobile airstairs were suddenly driven away.
The accident occurred after the plane arrived at a ‘remote stand’ and passengers deplaned via the mobile airstairs into waiting busses. After all the passengers had boarded, the crew member at the back of the plane stepped onto the platform of the mobile airstairs to signal that all the passengers had disembarked.
As the crew member went to step back onboard the plane, the mobile airstairs were suddenly driven away. The crew member tried to get back onto the plane but slipped and plunged onto the tarmac below.
Earlier this year, a video of an airport ground worker plunging to the ground from a set of airstairs in Indonesia went viral when his colleagues removed the stairs from the side of the plane too soon.
Back in 2018, an Air India flight attendant suffered much more serious injuries after she fell from the open door of a larger Boeing 777. The 53-year-old veteran crew member sustained a broken leg and broke both her heels after attempting to close the cabin door without any ground service equipment in place.
