Plane evacuated after phone catches fire mid-air

An Alaska Airlines aircraft, Flight 751, flying from New Orleans to Seattle, US had to evacuate on arrival at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport after a passenger’s phone caught fire mid-air. Alaska Airlines in a statement to The Verge said that the flight crew had to use fire extinguishers and a “battery containment bag to stop the phone from smoking”. Due to the smoke and use of fire extinguishers inside the cabin, it was difficult to make the passenger deboard the plane as they would have normally and evacuation slides had to be deployed at the airport “due to hazy conditions inside the cabin”.

A report by The Seattle Times, quoting the spokesman for the Port of Seattle said that the passenger’s phone that caught fire was a Samsung Galaxy A21.

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Cooper in his statement to The Seattle Times said, “After much digging, I can tell you that the phone was burned beyond recognition. However, during an interview with one of our Port of Seattle Police officers, the passenger volunteered the phone was a Samsung Galaxy A21. Again, we could not confirm it by looking at the remains of the device.”

Two passengers were taken to a local hospital for treatment. There’s no information yet on how serious their injuries are. The Alaska Airlines Flight 751 had 129 passengers and six crew members onboard.

As per a report by Associated Press, after the passengers slid down from the plane using the evacuation slides on the runway, they were taken to the terminal by bus.

The authorities or Samsung is yet to pinpoint the exact cause of the phone catching fire. The passenger’s phone said to have “overheated and began sparking”.

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