The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said on Monday evening that it was investigating when happened when a flight landed in the midwest but was discovered to be missing its emergency evacuation slide.
The inflatable slide, so familiar in theory to millions of passengers from the safety-briefing videos that precede take-off – but which most hope they will never have to see, let alone use, in real life – was discovered on the ground.
The US federal agency reported that a United Airlines Boeing 767-300 flight had lost the slide on Monday shortly before landing safely in Chicago.
After flight 12, with 155 passengers and 10 crew, landed in Chicago, where it had traveled from Zurich, maintenance workers discovered the slide was missing, the FAA said.
The slide was later located in a neighborhood about four miles east of Chicago’s massive O’Hare airport. United said no one was injured on the ground.
A local Fox News report said that Chicago police officers responded to a call from a residential neighborhood in a north-western part of the city and the emergency slide in question was was found in someone’s backyard.
However, the FAA is the lead agency now looking into the mishap, as it involves an aircraft, the Chicago police department said.
Aviation officials retrieved the slide from the home’s yard, Fox reported, and further details of what occurred are being awaited.
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