The emergency evacuation of a Delta flight left passengers shaken in Atlanta.
The husband of one of the travelers on board a flight from Atlanta to Minneapolis-St. Paul on Friday, Jan. 10, shared a video on Reddit of the plane’s evacuation slides being deployed as rare snowfall accumulated at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.
“They were accelerating to take off and the plane slowed,” the poster’s wife told him of the harrowing incident. “They were told to duck down and then they were told to evacuate, via emergency slide.”
Video captured by Atlanta News First showed passengers making their way down the deployed slides and running away from the plane. Several passengers appeared panicked in the video as they attempted to get as far away from the plane as possible.
Delta Airlines told PEOPLE in a statement that its flight crew had to “suspend the takeoff” of flight 2668 after an “indication” of an “engine issue,” though it did not detail what may have caused the problem or its severity.
“Nothing is more important than the safety of our people and customers, and we apologize to our customers for their experience,” the airlines said in its statement. “We are working to support our customers and get them to their destinations as safely and quickly as possible.”
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Delta noted there were 201 passengers and seven crew on board, including two pilots and five flight attendants, when the Boeing 757-300 aircraft encountered the issue. The passengers were evacuated from the plane via slides and were transported back to the terminal through ground transportation, the airline said.
Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport shared in its own statement on X that the incident happened at about 9:10 a.m. and that four passengers reported having minor injuries. One person was transported to the hospital for treatment while three others were treated on the scene.
It also noted that the incident, along with the “ongoing severe weather,” delayed operations at the airport, but shared in a 10:35 a.m. update that “the aircraft and the runway are expected to be cleared shortly.”
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said on its website that it was investigating the incident. It also issued a ground stop for Delta flights into Atlanta, which was extended until 2 p.m.
The Redditor who shared the initial report also provided an update on his wife and the rest of the passengers on the flight saying that once they returned to the airline terminal, they were moved into a “conference room of some sort” with “snacks and drinks and cots.” However, it was unclear if the passengers were immediately able to rebook a new flight.
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