It’s pretty common to see special flights get water salutes. This can be done for many reasons — to celebrate a new route, to honor military members, to commemorate a pilot’s retirement, etc.
Well, to celebrate the 88th birthday of Saudi Arabia, Dubai Airport decided to prepare a special water salute for a Saudia Airlines flight upon landing a couple of weeks ago (I have no clue how I missed this at the time).
Unfortunately that didn’t go quite as planned, and there’s video of it. You can see the two fire trucks lined up, and the truck on one side sprays water correctly, while the truck on the other side can’t seem to control the flow of water, causing it to spray all over the place.
Apparently the way it sprayed water caused the emergency slide of the plane to deploy. How could that happen? I’m not sure exactly, but my guess is that the pressure of the water triggered some sensor on the door, causing this to happen.
Here’s the video:
I obviously feel terribly for the person who caused this (though I guess we don’t know if it was user error or if the jet was malfunctioning), and for any delay this caused for passengers, though I also have to admit that I laughed out loud when I saw this.
For what it’s worth, many airlines and airports have stopped doing water salutes. Some have stopped them due to water shortages, while others have stopped them due to the mishaps that have occurred as a result of them. It will be interesting to see if Dubai Airport has a new policy on water salutes after this incident…
This story made my day and I also laughed out loud! I need that! Thank you!
I'll give you one guess of the nationality of the fire hose operator....
@Aziz
so how do you know Hong Konger is male?
@hong konger wouldn’t get away with such a racist comment if it were directed at a different group.
Imagine he’d said “Jews will be Jews” or blacks will be blacks”.
Whatever happened to moderating offensive comments? selective tolerance to racism, I guess.
I need debit to give us his professional opinion about this.
haha...like a firehose held by a child...
I'm guessing the exit row pax got an unexpected shower
I hope they fix the water cannon, and/or train the water cannon operator better, before the fire department needs to respond to an actual aircraft fire. Just imagine that plane in flames and the water getting nowhere near it.
Oops, lol
Water salutes are the dumbest thing
Arabs will be Arabs
Saudi Arabia’s founding day was September 23rd, 1932, according to Wikipedia, so that would make the country 86 instead of 88?
It's an A320, so the overwing exits open inwards (the panel is pulled in manually and then thrown out). At altitude, air pressure is holding the panel firmly in place as a plug, but on the ground, it seems the water pressure managed to push the panel in. Once "opened", the slide would deploy automatically. That's really unfortunate.
Reminds me of the time (2015) when MAN airport fire crews gave Virgin Atlantic A330 'Beauty Queen' a water cannon salute. But instead of spraying the plane with water, the fire crew mistakenly coated it with fire-suppressing foam causing the flight to be delayed overnight.