Passengers stunned after woman suddenly jumps through plane door

PASSENGERS on a flight were left stunned when a woman rose from her seat and jumped out of the plane while it was moving on the tarmac.

The passenger reportedly opened the emergency exit door and jumped out of the plane as it was taxiing on the tarmac at Houston airport. Picture: YouTube/hamptubestr0

PASSENGERS on a flight were left stunned when a woman rose from her seat and jumped out of the plane while it was moving on the tarmac.

The United Airlines flight from New Orleans had just arrived in Houston and was taxiing towards its gate at George Bush International Airport when the passenger reportedly walked out of the emergency exit on the plane’s wing and jumped about 4.5m to the ground.

She then started running towards the terminal before being detained by police. CNN reported that the woman was treated for non-life threatening injuries but was not charged over the incident.

Passenger Hampton Friedman, who uploaded a video of the open door after the woman escaped through it, told CNN he was sitting across the aisle when it happened.

“I realised when the door popped open and a woman stepped out of it,” he said.

Passenger Cathy Cole said the woman didn’t say anything before she leapt from the plane.

“A lady opened emergency exit door which she was sitting next to, and jumped off plane as we were 30 minutes early. Ran to terminal,” Ms Cole wrote on Facebook.

“We stopped short of gate waiting and she got the exit door open and jumped off onto tarmac!”

Sniffer dogs checked the plane after the incident. Picture: Facebook/Cathy Cole

Commotion on the tarmac after the incident. Picture: Facebook/Cathy Cole

Ms Cole said the woman had got up to use the bathroom and returned to a new seat on the emergency exit row next to the door.

“When plane stopped she opened door and jumped,” she said.

Sniffer dogs scoured the plane before passengers were given the all-clear to disembark.

The woman was not the first passenger to attempt making a quick getaway from a plane.

In May, a woman tried to open the front cabin door of a Jetstar plane as the flight approached Melbourne’s Avalon airport from Sydney.

An “impatient” passenger who wanted to get off a China Eastern Airlines plane before anyone else in 2014 opened the door himself, triggering the emergency slide and costing the airline about $19,700.

And passengers weren’t the only ones prone to such hasty actions.

Fed-up flight attendant Steven Slater astonished passengers in 2010 when he hurled insults at passengers on a grounded flight, grabbed beers from the galley, triggered the inflatable slide and slid his way to unemployment.

A similar incident occurred in April, when a United Airlines flight attendant burst open the front door of a plane at Houston’s George Bush International Airport, triggered the inflatable evacuation slide, slid down and kept walking. She was later sacked.