Chicago Family Stunned After Plane Part Crash-Lands in Backyard

Flight safety briefings tell passengers about what to do in case of an emergency, from using their seat as a flotation device to escaping the plane via evacuation slide if necessary. But what happens if the slide is missing?

Some United Airlines passengers confronted that hypothetical on July 17 on a Boeing 767 was carrying travelers from Zürich, Switzerland to Chicago. On the approach to O'Hare Airport, one of the plane's inflatable evacuation slides fell from the aircraft and crashed into a homeowner's backyard in Chicago's Northwest Side, not too far from the airport. 

Patrick Devitt said his son and father-in-law were inside the house having lunch in the kitchen when they heard a loud "boom" around 12:15 p.m. Devitt was on his way home from work at the time. The slide had hit the house on its way down, damaging roof shingles, a downspout, and a kitchen window screen in the process. Devitt's relatives alerted him to the incident, and after he arrived home, he dragged the deflated slide from the backyard to the front. 

Devitt told ABC7 that the unexpected object was "larger than a small car." "It's a very, very big piece of equipment that fell," he said. He called 911 after the incident, and within 30 minutes, officials from the Federal Aviation Administration were at his house. It wasn't until the plane landed safely at O'Hare that maintenance workers discovered a slide was missing from the plane. Representatives from United Airlines showed up at Devitt's doorstep later that day and confirmed they're cooperating with the FAA in their investigation.

"I'm stunned a little bit," Devitt admitted. "I'm just glad that everybody is safe and okay. Just seeing that in my backyard, like wow. This really happened. It fell off of an airplane and landed in our backyard."

While a Boeing 767 losing one of its evacuation slides is rare, it isn't totally unheard of. The same thing happened in 2016 near Phoenix's Sky Harbor Airport and in 2019 near Boston's Logan Airport.

Turns out supersonic planes aren't the only aircraft to present real problems for people on the ground.