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Smoke-Filled Delta 'Flight from Hell' Evacuated in Latest Airplane Nightmare

One passenger said the fumes made her "instantly dizzy" and left her feeling "faint and sick" even after she left the plane.
Drew Schwartz
Brooklyn, US
Photos courtesy of Rachel Naftel.

Airplanes are beginning to seem more like metal sky-prisons where engines explode, windows crack open mid-flight, and stewardesses terrorize their passengers than viable modes of transportation. In this week's latest aeronautic nightmare, a Delta flight descended into an actual vision of hell when the cabin inexplicably filled with smoke—forcing travelers to climb out onto the wings and evacuate down to the tarmac.

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According to CBS News, shortly after the flight from Detroit to Denver touched down on Tuesday night, passengers started to notice smoke pouring from the vents as they taxied toward the gate. Without any word from the pilot, and no oxygen masks in sight, everyone onboard, reasonably, freaked the fuck out.

"Everyone was kind of yelling, like, 'Hey, there's smoke coming out of the vents. What's going on? Open the doors. Why aren't the masks dropping down?'" passenger AJ Davidson told CBS Denver. "After a couple of minutes, the flight attendant was like, 'Everyone get low to the ground and cover your mouth with a blanket, or clothes, or whatever you have.'"

Smoke reportedly filled the inside of the plane, and the folks onboard were forced to evacuate. While some made their way to an emergency slide at the front of the plane, others had to crawl out onto the wings and hop down onto the tarmac.

Passenger Rachel Naftel wrote on Twitter that the fumes she'd inhaled made her "instantly dizzy" and left her feeling "faint and sick," even after she'd made it off the plane. A few passengers sustained minor injuries, and at least one person was rushed to the hospital, CBS Denver reports. There's still no word on where the smoke came from, or exactly what it was—according to a statement from the Denver airport, there wasn't a fire onboard. For its part, Delta apologized for "the concern this situation has caused" in a statement, writing that "the safety of Delta's customers and crew is our top priority."

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Flames or no flames, crawling out of a smoke-filled cabin onto the wing of an airplane sounds like an absolute nightmare—even more of a "flight from hell" than the actual 666 flight from HEL.

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