Alert Secret Service agents seized the stairs and wrestled them to the ground.
This reminded me of this ATC radio communication (YouTube link) where, prior to takeoff, a Lufthansa pilot finds there’s a fuel door open on their A340. He asks for permission to step outside and close it himself. Permission is granted. Apparently the A340 has an escape hatch near the cockpit with a ladder.
And oddly enough you ask that nearly 17 years to the day after all air traffic in North America was ordered to land…
As you note - for emergency disembarking you could use the emergency slides.
I imagine you could also simply use a ladder, although the airline would probably frown on that and/or demand someone somehow stabilize that thing before sending passengers either down or up it (the latter if there’s some emergency need to evacuate the vicinity).
But it would probably be rare that an airport capable of serving a large airliner type jet AND lacking one of the standard roll-up staircases.
Extensive work is being done on modifying airliners & ground systems to allow use of both front & back doors at once for boarding & exiting. As Dewey says, it would be much faster.
And that would make everybody happy.
- Passengers would be happy with less time delays.
- Airlines would be happy that an expensive plane spends more time in the air, and less time on boarding & deplaning.
- Airports would be happy at less time for each plane, so they could handle about twice as many landings/departures per day.
- Passengers would also be happy since all this should make ticket prices cheaper.
There are at least 2 companies working on this. They are designing small engines to add to the landing wheels of planes, to allow them to taxi up and then turn sideways to the terminal, so that an exit tunnel could be extended to both the front & back doors. This would require modifications to the terminal tunnels, but quite cost effective.
The main problem is that the motors would have to be carried on the planes during flight, so the extra weight is a big cost to the airline. Designing motors strong enough to move a loaded plane, yet not too heavy is what they are working on. So far, there have been some demonstrations, and even some tentative orders placed by airlines, but no actual example in use, and no government approval.
They all landed on actual airports though, right? Are there airports with runways long enough for a 747, but not have stairs that could reach a 747?
On 9/11/01 all the big airplanes definitely landed at airports with such amenities as paved runways (if a 747 tried to land in a field it would end badly, with the landing gear coming to a quick halt as it sunk into the ground and the rest of the jet attempting to continue to travel at high speed…) But, potentially, some of them might have landed at military airfields or cargo airports that were not set up for airline passengers and might, indeed, have had problems getting people off those airplanes. Not sure exactly how to go about researching that.
I do know that in my area all the smaller airports had airplanes much larger than usual landing at their facilities, in some cases parking airplanes (smaller than 747’s, of course) on the grass in between runways, taxiways, and ramps or really just anywhere they could stash them. At least some of them had to be flown out empty with minimal fuel or even stripped of internal fittings to get them out of runways much shorter than they’d normally use. So it’s possible that even where rolling staircases were available there weren’t enough of them, or there might have been problems getting them to the airplanes that needed them. Cargo and military airplanes load and unload differently than civilian airliners.
The situation really was a mess and it’s just as well everyone was more or less grounded for a few days to a couple weeks because all that had to be sorted out. Probably most airplanes were in the “wrong” place, landing at an airport they never intended to land at and normally wouldn’t even consider. Crews had to be repositioned, fuel transported to the airplanes that needed it, in some cases permission to take off in conditions/circumstances normally not condoned, a big headache all around.
The bottom line is that airlines will avoid situation where they can’t use either a jetbridge or a rolling staircase, but if they have to a work around will be devised. They also don’t want passengers wandering around an active airport because places where airplanes are moving around are frickin’ dangerous.
Why wouldn’t they use a ground-support tractor to push/pull the jet into the proper position? Or use roll-up stairs or adjustable bridges? Adding weight to aircraft seems like the least cost-effective way to solve the problem. (I don’t expect you to know the answer, I’m just wondering why that approach is even being considered.)
I always thought it should work like a Disneyland ride: both sides of the airplane flop open, everybody exits at the same time on one side while the new passengers slide in from the other side.
Welcome to Burbank, CA. I always have to remember to sit in the back of the airplane in order to be one of the first off. 
The BAe146 has airstairs as an option. They slide out from a cavity next to the front left door and unfold after being pushed out. They close with hydraulic power. BAe146 freighters may have a ladder stowed in the forward galley, otherwise in both passenger and freighter versions you can get in and out via the avionics bay which has a hatch in the flightdeck and another down by the nose wheel. The avionics bay wouldn’t ever be used for passengers but in situations where there is no ground support (it happens) the pilots can use the avionics bay to get out and get chocks, roll up stairs, etc.
I have seen B747 freighters parked on the ramp with a ladder for access.
I’m about to start work with a company flying A320s and have access to the operating manuals. From what I can see airstairs are an option but none of the fleet have them fitted. I don’t know if there are other methods for getting in and out without stairs.
You can board via front and rear doors just by using push up stairs to the rear door. This is much cheaper and simpler than modifying aircraft and terminals.
Qantas and Virgin both do this in Australia.
I see the obligatory hand in pocket of the ground staff.
At our local airport, the 737s used to do this, but I remember them as deploying faster than that.
The 737s were updated and the new ones didn’t have the airstairs, and a jetway was installed. Then they dropped the 737 from servicing our airport, so the airline removed the jetway.
We have ATR-72s and Bombardier Q300s now, and they have little stairways that roll up to the planes at the airport.
The first time my son flew on an airplane he was 4-ish. He enjoyed the entire experience, but became nervous as we approached our destination.
When I asked what was wrong, I learned that he’d seen people skydive on tv. He assumed that when our flight was complete we’d be given parachutes and sent groundward that way. He was relieved when I told him how it was really done.
I flew to Dulles in the early '80s. The aircraft (a DC-10, if I recall correctly) parked by a long, low building quite some distance from the terminal. Those mobile lounges came right to the door of the airplane; I walked onto the lounge, then it drove to the gate in the main terminal. It was slower than regular disembarking, and I’m sure there were labor costs to hire the lounge drivers, but it also meant the terminal could be smaller because the gates were closer together.
I assume that as Dulles got busier, that system became unworkable. They built a new remote concourse with conventional gates and jetways and started using the mobile lounges to just shuttle people from the concourse to the terminal.
Dulles has switched to regular gates for most flights, but international arrivals still have to use the mobile lounges unless they’re United or Star Alliance flights. The second class airlines don’t get to use the gates that connect directly to customs.
I would have sworn Burbank went to jetways more than 10 years ago. I say so because I noted it on one flight - “ah, they’ve joined the modern era.” Weird, because google maps shows none.
But I always loved that the terminal backs up to the active runway. Makes for a quick getaway.
Most small commuter jets (76 passengers and less) can deploy their own stairs that are part of the front door panel. As you get into the larger short-haul aircraft (EMB 195, which can carry 100+ passengers), those doors seem to go away and jet bridges/rolling stairs seem to be more common.
And just as an aside, add me to the “I hate Charles DeGaulle airport with the fury of an exploding star” group.
In Stephen King’s “The Langoliers,” an airplane lands at an airport in Maine devoid of people. Does anyone recall how the passengers got out of the plane in that story?
In the movie version, they get out using the forward evacuation slide. They get on again with one of those mobile stairways. The aircraft in the movie is a DC10.
Some 737s have a stair below the forward fuselage door that pops out of the fuselage and folds down to the ground. When I was working in Service Engineering we got a lot of questions about fixing them.