A woman who fell from a plane’s door in a chaotic rush to the emergency exits was knocked unconscious and left seriously injured on a Hungarian airport tarmac, Newsweek reported.
The incident took place on Friday at Ferenc Liszt International Airport in Budapest where 38-year-old Dikla Abitbul was aboard a flight to Tel Aviv, Israel, after spending five-days vacationing in Hungary.
The Times of Israel reported the plane, which was preparing for flight, was being tow for taxiing by a tug. The vehicle was emitting thick smoke that was sucked into the plane’s cabin via the air-conditioning system, causing panic among the passengers who scrambled from their seats to the the emergency exits.
Abitbul reportedly fell to the tarmac and sustained head injuries as well as broken arms and ribs after cabin crew opened the doors to deploy the emergency chutes to allow passengers to exit the plane.
She was rushed to a Budapest hospital where she underwent surgery and was placed on a respirator.
“She didn’t slide. She didn’t manage to slide,” her mother Riki Sapirin later told Ynet News. “She stood in the doorway of the plane, among the first five passengers standing in line waiting for them to open the evacuation slide.”
Sapirin added she believed the fall may have been caused by the powerful force of the jet engines but could also have been due to the passengers’ panicked stampeded towards the plane doors.
“They said that the pilot had asked the flight stewards not to open the emergency doors, but the panic among the passengers forced them to open them,” she told Ynet.
“Another man was also injured after sliding down from the plane, not from Israel, but Dikla flew from the door onto the asphalt.”
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