‘We dodged a bullet’: Evacuation slide falls from flight onto suburban town

‘This was an accident waiting to happen,’ say residents

A police officer inspects an evacuation slide that fell from a jet into the garden of a home in Milton (AP)

The residents of a town in Massachusetts are “angry” after an evacuation slide fell from a plane flying overhead.

The 6ft silver slide tumbled from a Delta flight travelling from Paris to Logan International Airport in Boston.

It landed in a front garden on Adams Street in the small town of Milton, where locals expressed their concern.

“We dodged a bullet,” Milton Select Board Chair Michael Zullas told the Boston Herald. “We’re thankful no one was injured.”

He added that residents are “angry” as this is the second time something has fallen from the sky onto Milton in the last 10 years.

The slide came from a Boeing 767, which the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has previously flagged as having issues with the emergency slide inflating accidentally during normal aircraft maintenance and operation.

“This was an accident waiting to happen,” said Milton local Cindy Christiansen. “They’ve known about this for a long time.”

She added that, while there’s increasing concern for the safety onboard flights, little is done about the safety under them.

The silver slide was 6ft long (AP)

“What if this had been a catastrophe?” she said.

Delta said in a statement, “Our maintenance team is inspecting the aircraft; at this time we do not have any additional information.”

The FAA has confirmed it is investigating the incident.

It said in a statement: “We investigate each incident thoroughly, and we work closely with air carriers to correct problems.

“If we find a systemic problem, we share that information with other operators to avoid future occurrences.”

The Independent has contacted Delta for comment.

It’s not the first time something has fallen from an aircraft.

In August, plane debris rained down “like bullets” when metal fragments fell off a Boeing 787 Dreamliner shortly after take-off in Rome.

People living under the aircraft’s flight path were pounded by hundreds of eight-inch pieces as the Norwegian jet departed the city’s Leonardo da Vinci–Fiumicino Airport.

“It was a storm of steel and iron,” one resident told the Il Messaggero newspaper. “I screamed and ran into the house.”

A spokeswoman for Norwegian said there had been “indications of a technical failure” but that the aircraft had landed safely.