A man was arrested after allegedly opening an emergency exit door that triggered the deployment of an emergency slide of a taxiing JetBlue flight at Boston Logan International Airport on Tuesday.
According to the Massachusetts State Police, Angel Luis Torres Morales, 23, was taken into custody after he “suddenly and without warning” opened the aircraft door while the plane was on the taxiway.
The incident occurred around 7:30 p.m. local time on JetBlue Flight 161, which was bound for San Juan, Puerto Rico.
“Other passengers restrained the individual until Troopers arrived on scene to detain them for further questioning,” Trooper Brandon Doherty of the Massachusetts State Police Office of Media Relations told NTD News in an emailed statement.
Doherty said that it appeared to be “an isolated incident” and did not pose a broader threat to public safety.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) confirmed in an email to NTD News the basic details of the event, stating that the passenger “opened an emergency exit door and deployed the slide while the plane was on a taxiway.”
The agency said it intends to investigate the incident further.
The latest security breach comes on the heels of another incident involving JetBlue.
Just a day earlier, two bodies were discovered in the landing gear compartment of a JetBlue aircraft at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in Florida. The bodies were found during a routine post-flight maintenance inspection of a plane that had arrived from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, JetBlue said in a statement.
“This is a heartbreaking situation, and we are committed to working closely with authorities to support their efforts to understand how this occurred,” JetBlue said regarding the Fort Lauderdale incident.
Speaking to the media, a Broward County Sheriff’s Office spokesman did not reveal the identities of the deceased but said that they were both males.