A British Airways pilot has mistakenly activated the emergency slide at Heathrow Airport seconds before take-off.
The blunder delayed the flight to Romania on Saturday morning for several hours and cost the airline £50,000, reported The Sun newspaper.
Passengers, who were strapped in their seats when the mistake happened, were left waiting for several hours until another flight with a different pilot could be found.
Pictures published by the paper showed airport firefighters surrounding Gate 24E where flight BA886 was due to leave for Romania shortly before 10am.
The mistake allegedly occurred because the captain did not disarm the plane door on the Airbus A320 when he opened it to pass documents to ground crew. This would have stopped the emergency slide from being deployed.
A source told the paper: "The captain of all people would have known the safety rules around opening doors.
"This is beyond a rookie error. It’s totally baffling to understand."
The rescheduled flight eventually left at 1.15pm, more than three hours after the advertised time.
A BA spokesperson said: "We apologised to customers and arranged a replacement aircraft to ensure they were able to continue their journey."
The spokesperson added that the aircraft returned to service once an engineer certified it as safe to fly.
