Patrick Devitt
The slide landed in a neighborhood just a few miles from the airport.
CNN –
A United Airlines Boeing 767 plane lost its emergency slide in midair Monday — and landed in the backyard of a home near Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, officials and a witness said.
Patrick Devitt lives in the neighborhood where the waterslide took place, several miles from the runways at O’Hare. He told CNN affiliate WLS his father-in-law and son were at their home and heard a bang in their backyard around 12:15 pm CT. Devitt’s father-in-law went outside, saw the slide in the backyard, and told Devitt’s son to call 911.
Devitt was on his way home from work at the time. When he got to the house, he dragged the slide from his backyard to the front of the house. He said the large device damaged the roof of the house and a kitchen window, WLS reported.
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“When it’s all stretched out,” Devitt told the Chicago broadcaster, “it’s bigger than a small car. It’s a very, very big device that fell down.”
According to the Federal Aviation Administration, maintenance workers at O’Hare found that the plane was missing the chute after landing. United Airlines said, “We immediately contacted the FAA and are working with our team to better understand the circumstances surrounding this matter.”
The Chicago Police Department said it responded to the incident at the 4700 block of North Chester Avenue but has referred questions about the investigation to the FAA, the lead agency.
In 2019, a chute fell from a Delta plane landing at Boston’s Logan International Airport. Also it fell in a residential area. There were no injuries.