A passenger on Australian budget airline Jetstar opened an emergency door and climbed out over the wing and engine after landing in Melbourne on Thursday, officials said.
Australian Federal Police arrested the man after he made an unauthorised departure from a Sydney-Melbourne flight.
“We can confirm that after arrival in Melbourne a passenger opened an emergency exit door, causing the slide to open automatically,” a Jetstar spokesperson said.
“The plane was parked at the gate.”
After exiting through the emergency exit, the man walked along the wing and then went down to the ground through the engine, officials said.
Fellow passenger Audrey Varghese told Melbourne radio 3AW the man was “behaving quite strangely”, ignoring seatbelt signs and repeated requests by flight attendants to remain seated.
“People found it quite strange. And then as the plane started to stop, he immediately got up and ran towards the emergency exit row,” he said.
Varghese said that in the process he was “pushing people, causing a bit of a commotion.”
He then “broke” the emergency door, opened the slide and “jumped off the plane”.
Varghese said other passengers were screaming and were obviously very scared.
“I think people were just screaming because the behavior was so weird.”
Federal police said they arrested a man for “alleged aggressive behaviour and violating aircraft safety protocols in domestic service”.
“Ambulance officers assessed the man’s condition and subsequently transferred him to hospital for further assessment, where he remains,” a police spokesperson said.
Police said they were still investigating but charges were expected to be laid “in the future.”
Jetstar, a subsidiary of Qantas, said it wanted to thank passengers for their “patience and understanding” during the incident.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
