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.

Emergency slide deployed on a British Airways plane at London Heathrow.

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A BA crew member activated a jet’s emergency slide by mistake
British Airways Airbus A321-200 on approach.

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The incident took place on a British Airways Airbus A321, similar to the one pictured hereCredit: Alamy

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.

Two British Airways cabin crew were sacked for mocking Asian passengers in a video

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