If you’ve ever listened to the cabin crew going through their various cross-check routines and wondered what “21 L” and the various other codes mean…I can’t help you. But I can tell you that one of them is supposed to mean that the aircraft door has been disarmed so that opening it doesn’t cause instant inflation of the emergency slides…inside the plane.
The picture above shows what happens when no one disarms the doors. As do the pictures below, all from Twitter posts. It’s not an everyday event, but it does happen several times a year, and it is a safety issue because the slides are very heavy, and the inflation system pumps them up to full firmness in about 10 seconds. Anyone standing in the way could be injured or killed.
The Telegraph (UK) has more details and some interviews with crew HERE
