Delta’s ‘Inside Slide’ Concept Unsuccessful

• Maybe you heard about that Delta flight from New York to Los Angeles on Saturday that experienced the rare thrill of having one of its emergency slides accidentally deploy — inside the plane. Thankfully, the aircraft was on the ground at the time — Salt Lake City, to be exact, after the flight was diverted to SLC due to an unrelated technical issue.

One of the passengers on that… um… unusual flight was Kiana Singh, MD/afternoon personality on CMG Top 40 WBLI/Long Island, who was seated just six rows from the insanity and was nice enough to share her experience with RAMP: “We were four hours into the 7am flight out of JFK, when the pilot said we would be making an emergency landing in Salt Lake City,” she said. “The original issue involved the temperature gauge. We were laid over in Salt Lake for about an hour and a half before they began boarding the plane again. After we had been re-seated, things took another turn. I thought I heard the wall exploding! This turned out to be the deployed air slide going off inside the craft! Everyone on the plane was pretty shaken up, but to the flight crew’s credit, they kept their cool as much as they could.” That’s Kiana (left, tan hoodie) making her unscheduled cameo on “a local TV station”

Sources told the New York Post that the slide was accidentally deployed by someone on the plane’s catering crew, striking a crew member in the head “like an airbag” of a car. Singh (pictured, left, in a less stressful situation) continued, “The attendant seemed to be conscious after the incident and was later walking around. The crew was very attentive to him, asking if he was okay. We saw medical personnel outside the gate ready to care for him. Luckily we didn’t have to exit via the slide! The door was still open since the plane was still in the process of re-boarding, but still a scary experience for everybody. Hoping all are OK!”

The Post said the injured employee was treated and released, and the passengers were awarded 7,500 miles by the airline for the inconvenience.