A “partial equipment failure” involving a jet bridge at Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (BWI) in Maryland on Saturday left six people injured.
The airport tweeted that the six people were taken to local hospitals with non-life threatening injuries. The jet bridge, an extendable hallway stretching from the terminal to the plane, was at Gate E-10 for Southwest Airlines Flight 822, according to the airline.
Southwest Airlines said the flight arrived at BWI from Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, with a request for paramedics to meet it to check out a passenger’s “onboard medical situation.” While medics were helping the passenger outside the aircraft, the airline said the jet bridge “experienced a failure.”
The remaining passengers got off the plane using stairs.
“We are working swiftly to assist all passengers and crew,” Southwest said in a statement to CNN.
The BWI Fire and Rescue Department responded, along with mutual aid, the tweet added.
The jet bridge failure at BWI Airport is “under investigation,” according to another tweet from the airport.
The bridge will remain closed until the investigation is over, the tweet said. The aircraft has been moved from the gate and there is no further impact to operations, it said.
BWI is 9 miles south of downtown Baltimore and 32 miles northeast of Washington, the airport’s website states. It is also the “busiest airport in the region,” the site says, and is named after Baltimore native Thurgood Marshall, who was the first African-American to serve on the US Supreme Court.
