Airplane (illustrative)
Airplane (illustrative)Thinkstock

Passengers are often frantic to be the first off an airplane after a long flight. However, few go as far as a 17 year old who opened the emergency hatch and slid off the plane immediately after landing at San Francisco Airport.

Fellow travelers testified that the boy seemed to be anxious the entire seven hour flight from Panama, and slid out and took off running the minute the plane taxied to a stop. The boy was caught by startled construction workers, who handed him over to airport police.

Sophia Gibson told San Jose Television KNTV that onlookers were stunned by how fast he ran. "It was as if he was like flying out, like it was really fast," she said.

Emergency exits on airplanes are designed to open quickly in the event of emergency, but opening them without being instructed to by the flight crew violates federal law.