The words "plane" and "losing balance" are, when used in the same sentence, enough to sow some serious fear into the hearts of not just travelers but also those who are on the ground and thinking about their next trip.
But, as was shared by passengers on social media, that was exactly what happened on a JetBlue (JBLU) -) flight from Barbados to New York — due to a sudden shift in balance at the gate, an Airbus A321 (EADSF) -) full of passengers seesawed backwards to the point that the plane's nose was thrust upwards into the air.
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"Very slowly move towards the middle of the airplane because everything is tipped up," a flight attendant is heard saying in a video posted to TikTok by CNN and CNBC tech commentator Sinead Bovell. Bovell happened to be traveling back to New York's JFK from a holiday in Barbados and captured the moment from the inside of the plane.
@sineadbovell The JetBlue plane I was on tipped backwards
♬ original sound - Sinead Bovell
'The plane abruptly tipped backwards...'
Later footage captured from the airport shows the plane tipping backwards and lifting in a semi-vertical position that is normally seen only when a plane is taking off. One of the doors to the plane's cargo compartment is also seen opening in the video.
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"When just over half the plane exited or maybe a little bit more, the plane abruptly tipped backwards so quickly and intensely that the tail end of the plane hit the pavement of the jet bridge," Bovell explains in her video from the incident.
Her footage of the flight attendant telling travelers to "move towards the middle of the airplane" was viewed more than 2.1 million times.
In a statement to CNN, JetBlue later explained that "the tail of the aircraft tipped backward causing the nose of the aircraft to lift up and eventually return back down" when the plane was already at the gate due to "a shift in weight and balance during deplaning."
Approximately half of the aircraft was already off the plane and either in the airport or heading there through the jet bridge while the other half was thrust forward suddenly but was then able to get off the plane "two rows at a time."
JetBlue and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey overseeing JFK confirmed to media that no injuries occurred as a result of the incident.
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"So guessing weight balance on a jetliner is important after all," journalist Brian Thompson, who shared the initial footage of the incident, quipped on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
While JetBlue did not elaborate on what prompted this particular "shift in balance," those in aviation know that having a proportional distribution of weight is critical to the safety of the aircraft both in the sky and while it's on the tarmac — the reason airlines remind passengers to stay seated until the seat belt sign is off even after the plane has landed is because having too many passengers jump up at once could disrupt the balance of the plane.
"Every person, bag and piece of cargo affects the longitudinal balance of the plane, so having it too heavily or lightly loaded towards either the nose or the tail can make it unstable and difficult to control," Simple Flying's Joanna Bailey and Sumit Singh wrote in 2022.
