On Thursday, an Air Congo flight arrived at Kindu Airport in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and passengers sat on the Boeing 737-800 for hours because the airine couldn’t find stairs to let them off. Eventually, passengers got so fed up waiting that they exited the plane themselves – by jumping from the door of the aircraft onto the tarmac.
The forward passenger door (1L/1R) of a 737 is about 11 feet off the ground. No injuries have been confirmed – even though it looks like they’re doing the drop with carry-on bags.
At Kindu Airport (KND), (Maniema) of Democratic Republic of the Congo, passengers of Air Congo company were forced to jump from the Door to get out of the plane as a Passenger Stairs was not made available after hours of waiting inside the cabin post arrival at the gate on… pic.twitter.com/MYAUywwSlD
— FL360aero (@fl360aero) December 19, 2025
With no air stairs available, that leaves three options:
- Just wait – however long it takes
- Tow the aircraft to available stairs
- Emergency evacuation slides – not something that’s usually to expedite getting off the plane under normal circumstances, and something that can cost tens of thousands of dollars.
“Just jump” is not considered one of the usual options. There’s no good reason for passengers to be free-climbing off a 737 door. It’s a significant breakdown in ground handling and crew control of the deplaning process.
Air Congo, based in Kinshasa, is one year old. At Kindu airport near the Lualaba River, the carrier operates flights to both Kinshasa and Kisangani. The carrier operates two Boeing 737-800s leased from Ethiopian Airlines, and has 2 ATR 72s coming from Ethiopian as well. They have plans to grow the fleet to six to ten planes, and have talked about 787 flights to places like Paris, Dubai, Brussels and Johannesburg.
We’ve certainly seen passengers leave planes in unorthodox ways before. For instance:
However I don’t know that I’ve seen everyone just take a free fall out the exits in a non-emergency situation.
