It might sound silly to tell you to read the instructions (what man ever does that?), however on a recent trip in an MD80 the hostie asked if I was familiar with the operation of the door, to which I replied "no" because she was a hottie and I wanted her to explain it... to my surprise when she did explain, I was amazed to find the door was completely different to all others on anything I had travelled on before and it actually opened inwards!
Read the manual!