Brian Plummer was sitting on the back of a Delta Air Lines flight ready to leave for La Guardia Airport on Monday when he saw a man and a woman with a service dog nearby, he said.
Mr Plummer said the flight from Atlanta was not fully loaded, and the couple had changed seats several times.
The man and woman never settled, and when he began taking a taxi on Flight 462 Runway, the man was shocked, ignoring the flight attendant’s seating order, saying he had post-traumatic stress disorder, Mr. Plumer said.
Shortly afterwards, Mr. Plumer said, he felt the plane stop. It was not immediately clear why, but the flight crew eventually told passengers what had happened.
The man was forced to open the cabin door by activating the emergency slide and then he, his female companion and their dog got out of the plane, officials said.
The couple was in custody; It is not clear what charges are levied, if any, they may face, or whether there is a ban on flying with Delta in the future.
It was not the first time that panic-stricken passengers at a New York-based airport had pulled out such an exercise, but the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs La Guardia, neither Delta, nor anyone on Monday could say such an escape was unusual.
“This is not happening every day on the report,” said Lenis Valens, a spokesman for the authority.
Mr Plummer said he saw a man standing after leaving the plane gate. “They looked really nice,” Mr. Plumer said of the couple.
The man told the flight attendant he would not be able to sit because of post-traumatic stress disorder, Mr. Plumer said.
“If I sit down, I’ll be unconscious outside,” the man said, calling out to Mr. Plummer.
The flight attendant again asked the man to take his seat, and he refused again, Mr. Plummer said. Instead, he began to move towards the front of the plane, until it was enough that Mr. Plumer had lost his sight.
At 10 a.m., the plane, which was scheduled to depart at 10 a.m., returned to the gate, where the remaining passengers were “normally evacuated and included in the alternate flight,” a Delta spokesman said. (Mr Plummer said his departure was delayed by several hours.)
Officials said no one was injured in the episode. It was not immediately clear where the service dog was.
The most famous example of an unauthorized sliding exit took place at Kennedy International Airport 10 years ago, with a JetBlue flight attendant saying he was involved in a dispute with a passenger.
In that case, after announcing his intentions regarding the aircraft’s public address system, the flight attendant activated the emergency slide, slipped down toward the star, and threw his tie to the ground as he walked.
Most recently, passengers aboard a flight from Florida at Newark Liberty International Airport escaped through an emergency exit and down an inflatable slide while the plane was at the gate in February 2018, according to WNBC.
When officers arrived to arrest him, the man was shouting that he was not on the plane because it was not his flight.
