Man Tries To Open Emergency Door Mid-Flight [VIDEO]

Chicago’s ABC affiliate reports:

Video from passengers shows a man getting duct-taped after a flight to Chicago was disrupted Tuesday. American Airlines plane number 1219 was heading to O’Hare Airport from Albuquerque, New Mexico. The flight was headed to Chicago Tuesday afternoon. The plane made it up to 26,000 feet when a man onboard tried to open a plane door.

That’s when airline staff and passengers jumped in, tackled the man, duck-taped him and forcefully restrained him until the plane could land safely back in Albuquerque.

Blaze Ward was one of the first passengers to wrestle the man down. “He already had the safety mechanism down and had both hands on the lever and he was like yanking it and he was a big dude and he had it pretty well pulled and I don’t know if you can hear it, but there was a difference in pressure, a whistling,” Ward said.

Chicago’s CBS affiliate reports:

Emma Ritz, a passenger on the plane, said a man tried to open the emergency door while in the air. “He was sitting at the emergency exit, and he cracked open the window that was protecting the handle. He ripped down the handle where it exposed some of the emergency exit and all the wind came rushing down,” said Ritz.

“The guy was screaming ‘I want to get out’ when he was restrained. I’m just curious what was going on with him, why he needed to get out of the plane.” Daniel Lewis, another passenger said he also noticed this. “People close to the window felt the pressure so the sound was what really alerted everyone,” said Lewis.