The emergency exit slide of a Boeing aircraft operated by Delta Air Lines fell off mid-flight on Friday (Picture: Getty Images)
The emergency exit slide of a Boeing plane operated by Delta Air Lines that fell off mid-air reportedly washed up at the home of a lawyer already suing the aircraft manufacturer.
New York attorney Jake Bissell-Linsk, whose firm filed a lawsuit against Boeing around the Alaska Airlines door plug blowout, was looking out the window from his beachfront home on Sunday morning when he spotted a yellow object stuck in the rocks.
It was the slide that dropped from the Boeing 767-300ER plane shortly after it departed John F Kennedy International Airport on Friday morning, Bissell-Links told the New York Post.
‘We are right on the beach and I saw it was sitting on the breakers,’ said the Belle Harbor, Queens resident.
Delta Air Lines crews recovered the emergency exit slide from a beach by a home in Belle Harbor, Queens (Picture: Getty Images)
‘I didn’t want to touch it but I got close enough to get a close look at it.
‘Our case is all about safety issues at Boeing, and this slide is literally right in front of my house.’
Delta Air Lines Flight 520, which was headed to Los Angeles, was forced to return to the New York airport after flight crew received an alert of a problem with the right-wing slide and heard a ‘vibration’ from that area, according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
The plane carrying 138 people landed safely and the aircraft was put out service to be ‘thoroughly evaluated’, stated Delta, adding it was ‘supporting retrieval efforts’ for the missing slide.
Boeing has not commented on the emergency exit slide incident (Picture: Getty Images)
Authorities had been looking for the piece since Friday afternoon, and it turned up near Beach 129th and beach 130th streets, six miles southeast of JFK International Airport.
Bissell-Linsk said he took pictures of the slide and that his neighbor called Delta. The airline’s crews arrived around 5pm the same day and retrieved the slide within 10 minutes and drove it away on a pickup truck.
His firm, Labaton Keller Sucharow, sued Boeing on January 30 claiming that the aircraft manufacturing company gave misleading and false statements regarding safety after the Alaska Airlines-Boeing 737 Max incident.
The firm is representing people who bought Boeing common stock from October 23, 2019, to January 24, 2024, when the company emphasized safety.
The Delta Air Lines plane that lost its emergency exit slide has been put out of service for evaluation (Picture: Getty Images)
Bissell-Linsk and Boeing did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Metro.co.uk.
The aircraft was 33 years old, according to FAA records.
Bissell-Linsk told the Post: ‘I think the slide should be handed over to whoever is investigating the incident.
‘We haven’t decided if the slide is relevant to our case.’
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