In what can only be akin to walking out the front door and realizing you locked your keys and the baby inside, the pilot of a Delta Air Lines flight found himself in a spot of trouble after the cockpit door locked behind him, forcing the first officer to make an emergency landing.
The flight from Minneapolis to Las Vegas landed safely after calling to report there’d been a bit of a snafu with a malfunctioning cockpit door, reports ABC News.
“About half way through [the 2.5-hour flight] there seemed to be some talking at the front of the plane. You could see the captain out there,” a passenger told ABC News. “There wasn’t a huge panic but some confusion.”
He explained that the door was jammed and he was stuck on the wrong side, the passenger said, calling it “very, very bizarre.”
But when the first officer was able to land at McCarran Airport in Las Vegas without a hitch, managing it “perfectly,” everyone broke out into spontaneous applause, he said.
Having the first officer on the other side of the plane meant he had access to the right controls to make the landing, but the plane needed to be towed in instead of taxiing to the gate.
“There was a door malfunctioned that locked the captain out so the first officer had to do an unassisted landing,” an airport spokesman said. “We take everything very seriously. This was an unusual landing. He called the airport so that we would have ground response available.”
Delta Plane Makes Emergency Landing After Pilot Locked Out of Cockpit [ABC News]
by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist