A court in Daegu, South Korea, on Monday 19 October sentenced a passenger who pulled up the lever of an emergency door at a cruising altitude of 37,000 ft on a flight from Bangkok to Daegu last year. The 38-year-old received four months in prison, suspended for two years, and 80 hours of community service12. The door did not open23.

What happened on board

The incident took place on Saturday 22 November 2025 at around 07:27, on board an aircraft of the South Korean low-cost carrier T'way Air23. The aircraft was between Hong Kong and Taiwan at the time, at about 11 km2. According to Money Today the flight was TW1064. The passenger took hold of the lever of an emergency door on the right-hand side of the aircraft with their right hand and lifted it once23. Money Today reports that this caused some disruption to the operation of the flight4.

T'way Air has since been renamed Trinity Airways. The airline took the new name in August 2026, after its takeover by the South Korean leisure group Sono Trinity Group51.

The verdict

The passenger was charged under South Korea's Aviation Security Act1. The act bars passengers from operating doors, exits or equipment on board. Anyone who does so in a way that endangers the security or the operation of the aircraft faces up to ten years in prison6.

The judge said the offence was not a minor one, given the purpose of the law, which is to protect aviation safety23. The sentence was still limited. The court took into account that the passenger lifted the lever only once and did not keep trying, that the door was very unlikely to open and that the real danger was therefore small12. The passenger also admitted the offence and had no criminal record7.

The verdict fits an established pattern. The South Korean legal newspaper Law Times reviewed the four court rulings of 2025 on tampering with aircraft doors: all four ended in suspended prison terms. The heaviest was eighteen months, suspended, for a passenger who operated an emergency door's mode lever over the Pacific to open it on a flight from Los Angeles to Incheon6. Around the same time Korean Air announced it would report passengers who tamper with emergency doors to the authorities and refuse to carry them. The airline counted 14 such cases on its aircraft in two years6.

Why the door stays shut at cruise

The door staying shut was no accident. An airliner keeps its cabin at a pressure equal to an altitude of no more than 8,000 ft8. Outside, at 37,000 ft, the air pressure is less than a third of that. Using the international standard atmosphere, the difference is then at least about 54 kPa, or roughly 7.8 psi: every square metre of door is pressed into its frame with a force of more than five tonnes.

The design of the door adds to that. Most emergency exits are plug doors: they sit in the frame like a stopper and have to move inward before they can swing out9. With a pressurised cabin that cannot be done. Certification rules also require that a door cannot open in flight by accident and that it is made as hard as possible to open one on purpose10.

At low altitude it is a different story. In May 2023 a passenger on Asiana Airlines flight 8124 from Jeju to Daegu did open an emergency door, when the Airbus A321 was about 213 m above the ground shortly before landing11. At that height the pressure difference is much smaller9. The aircraft landed with the door open and several passengers were taken to hospital with breathing problems1112. In November 2023 the Daegu court gave the man three years in prison, suspended for five years, with probation and psychiatric treatment12. After the incident Asiana stopped selling the seats right next to the exit on the A321s concerned11.

What the crew does

For cabin crew it starts before departure: exit row seats go to passengers who can help in an emergency, and they are briefed on the door before the flight116. If a flight attendant still sees someone at a door lever, they step in and inform the flight deck. What happens next is the captain's decision. Under the international Tokyo Convention of 1963, the aircraft commander may take reasonable measures, including restraint, against a person who endangers safety on board, and may call on the other crew members for help13. The commander can then hand that passenger over to the authorities on arrival13.

Recently we covered a passenger who was duct-taped to a seat on an American Airlines flight, and a Delta Connection captain who asked for supervisors at the gate.