A plane door opened during landing on a Pakistan International Airlines flight yesterday.

According to reports, domestic flight PK631 from Islamabad to Sukkur had just touched down when the door opened.

The aircraft was an ATR-42-500 – a twin-turboprop, short-haul regional jet.

Fahmida Iqbal Khan, a human rights and gender activist, tweeted about her experience onboard the flight: “Emergency door of PK631 got broken today, the moment it touched base Sukkur Airport. 

“Had it happened few seconds before it landed, we would have become the past and our names would have written in one of those who lost their lives during plane crashes. Please stop flying ATR.”

She also shared a picture of the plane on the tarmac while crew appear to inspect the doors.

A video uploaded to YouTube by another passenger shows the door open while the plane is still moving on the tarmac. 

“Emergency door rips open during landing,” reads the caption.

However, there seems to be some dispute about how the door opened.

While Ms Khan said that, “It broke the moment it touch base runway,” a PIA spokesperson told The Independent: “The handle was lifted accidently by one of the passengers from the inside which caused it to open. However, we have launched an investigation into the incident.”

It’s not the first time a plane door has opened unexpectedly.

A flight from Manchester was delayed by almost eight hours in June 2019 after a passenger mistakenly opened an emergency exit instead of the toilet door.

Pakistan International Airlines’ (PIA) flight PK702 was ready for an on-time departure to Islamabad and the doors were “armed”, the mode in which the emergency evacuation slide is deployed as soon as a door is opened.

Even though the seatbelt signs were on, a female passenger decided to use the toilet. But she mistakenly opened door L5, at the rear of the aircraft on the left-hand side, rather than the adjacent toilet door. 

In a statement, PIA said: “A passenger erroneously opened the emergency door causing the emergency slide to activate.”

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