Is it really that expensive, costing hundreds of thousands? Where does the cost come from?

When flying on airplanes, have you ever sat near the emergency exit door?

Let's take a look at a few typical cases first...

Passenger opens airplane door and deploys slide

On a flight waiting to take off at Beijing Airport, a passenger, after hearing the flight attendant warn the front row passengers "under normal circumstances, please do not touch the emergency exit," felt very curious and wanted to see what would happen if they touched it.

So they pressed the handle and opened the airplane's emergency exit door, causing the emergency slide to deploy. The passenger was then taken away by the police and administratively detained for 12 days, also facing high economic compensation claims from the airline.

On a flight from Sanya to Mianyang, during the deboarding process, a passenger felt the airplane was too stuffy, so they casually opened the left emergency door, causing the airplane's slide to deploy and get damaged. The passenger was then administratively detained for 15 days.

On a Thai Smile Airlines flight scheduled from Chiang Mai to Bangkok, as the plane began taxiing for takeoff, a foreign male passenger suddenly got up from his seat, pulled down the left wing emergency exit escape hatch, causing the door to open and the inflatable evacuation slide to fall from the wing to the ground. The damage caused was estimated at $20,000.

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Seeing this, many friends may be puzzled: it's just opening the emergency slide, why is it so expensive, and why the detention?

Why are emergency slides so "expensive"?

Although we don't often see the emergency slides deployed during our flights, in special situations, they become the "lifeline" for all passengers on board, a vital tool for emergency evacuation.

During a ground evacuation, flight attendants will open the ready-to-use hatches, and the slides will automatically inflate into an elastic evacuation slide, allowing all passengers to evacuate the aircraft as quickly as possible.

In a water ditching, the slides can be used as floating platforms, with passengers jumping into the water and holding onto the ropes on the slides for survival; the slides can also be used as life rafts, with passengers sitting inside the slides for survival.

To us, the emergency slide may seem like a simple inflatable cushion, but it is actually a systemic tool, including the slide bladder, gas cylinders, trigger switches, and other equipment.

Once an aircraft's slide is deployed, it needs to be sent back to a professional factory for testing, folding, standardization, and reinstallation, with a minimum repair cost of around $13,000.

The disassembly and replacement of the slides not only incurs transportation costs, but also requires at least 4 engineers to work for 5 hours to complete.

Once an aircraft's slide is deployed, the originally scheduled flight will definitely not be able to take off. Adding in the reduced passenger capacity, aircraft repositioning, passenger accommodation, and impact on subsequent flights, the costs can really add up.

Finally, let me share with you the reference prices for emergency slides of different aircraft models:

Boeing 737 main slide: about $10,000;

Airbus A320 main slide: about $12,000;

Airbus A330 main slide: about $26,000, emergency exit slide: about $20,000;

Boeing 777 main slide: $27,000-$30,000;

Airbus A380 main slide: about $41,000;

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Next time if you're sitting near the emergency exit, be sure to keep your hands off!