Frontier Flight Attendant Grabs Woman Screaming “Open The Door” While Her Mother Was Unresponsive

A Frontier Airlines flight reached Atlanta 20 minutes early, but some passengers couldn’t get off. A broken jet bridge interrupted deplaning, and video shows a flight attendant grabbing a woman near the closed exit as she screams, “Open the door!” The woman’s mother had become unresponsive and she was trying to bang on the door to get an employee’s attention. Frontier explained that this happened October 6 on flight 2052 from New Orleans. Passengers had begun exiting when the jet bridge became misaligned with the aircraft door. They stopped deplaning until maintenance fixed it. The airline says passengers received announcements and were able to leave once the bridge was reconnected. The video’s caption says they were an hour ‘without air’. Frontier says the repair process took 27 minutes. Video shared by Mario Nawfal Video shows the dim cabin, with passengers crowding the forward galley, and a flight attendant pulling the woman back from the door. I understand why the flight attendant would keep someone away from that exit. If the bridge isn’t properly aligned, opening the door doesn’t provide a safe path into the terminal. Passengers crowding him make it harder to manage the door and get help to anyone who needs it. But a broken jet bridge doesn’t explain why passengers couldn’t have adequate cooling while they waited. Aircraft routinely sit at gates with their engines off. Cooling can come from ground equipment or the aircraft’s auxiliary power unit. If cooling had stopped, Frontier needed to get someone in place to restore it while maintenance worked on the bridge. If that couldn’t happen promptly, operations needed to assess another way off, such as properly positioned stairs. And if a passenger had become unresponsive, getting medical help aboard needed to take priority over an ordinary maintenance wait. The Department of Transportation’s tarmac delay guidance requires comfortable cabin temperatures and adequate medical attention when needed. I’ve covered an American Airlines passenger who opened an emergency exit while waiting for a jet bridge in Charlotte. I’ve also written about Delta and JSX passengers becoming ill during hot ground delays in Las Vegas. Protecting an exit and keeping the cabin tolerable are both part of handling the delay. Topics on this page