A BUNGLING crew member activated a jet’s emergency slide by mistake, putting it out of service and delaying hundreds of passengers.
The gaffe, on a BA flight, would have cost the airline £100,000.
The Airbus A321 was grounded and the flight from London Heathrow to Brussels cancelled following Monday morning’s blunder.
Passengers endured a three-hour wait while another jet was found to take them to Belgium.
A source said: “The crew member wasn’t thinking and made the most basic of errors by deploying the emergency slide while on the ground at Heathrow.
“It’s a minimum £100,000 mistake and knocked out services for the rest of the day.
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“This error is not easy to achieve.
“It really beggar’s belief and staff are trained to know the basics.”
British Airways said: “We apologised to customers for the delay and our teams worked hard to arrange a replacement aircraft so customers were able to travel with us as planned.”
Last year, a BA flight was grounded just before take-off from Heathrow to Bucharest after the captain activated his jet’s emergency slide.
The Sun also told how a bungling steward had a first day to forget when he activated the emergency slide as his plane taxied to the runway.
He was on his debut flight on a Boeing 777 and accidentally opened an emergency door on the service from Heathrow to Nigeria.