One passenger’s cell phone became too hot to handle while aboard a recent Southwest plane. The airline told CNN that 108 passengers were on a plane at Denver International Airport when one passenger’s cell phone, and then a plane seat, caught fire, leading to an evacuation.
“Everybody saw the smoke, because it kind of filled the back of the cabin. And then somebody screamed ‘Fire,’” passenger Jennifer Rodgers told CBS News. “Everybody kind of stood up, was trying to figure out what was happening.”
Seth Anderson, who was also on the flight, added, “It must have been burning pretty rapidly, because there was a pause, and then there was again ‘Fire! Fire!’ And then all of a sudden everybody just started getting up, and that’s when all the panicking started on the plane.”
Those in the back of the plane were instructed to disembark via an emergency slide, while passengers in the front left through the front door via the jet bridge, CNN reported.
“I kind of got pushed around a little bit,” Jaquetta Anderson told CBS News. “People were yelling leave your stuff, but I actually had two dogs with me, and I wasn’t going to leave them.”
Southwest Speaks Out
CNN reported that one person suffered minor injuries amid the evacuation. The person whose phone caught fire was treated for burns, according to the outlet.
“The smell was really bad from the lithium battery or whatever it was,” Rodgers told CBS News. “A girl was holding a Samsung phone that sort of started smoking. It burned her hands.”
After members were able to extinguish the fire, the plane took off, arriving three hours late to Houston, Texas, CNN reported.
“Nothing is more important to Southwest than the safety of its customers and employees,” the airline told the outlet. “The incident remains under investigation.”
It Could Have Been Much Worse
Anderson told CBS News that he’s grateful for the flight’s early technical troubles, which meant that the aircraft was still parked at the gate—and not up in the air—when the phone caught fire.
“I can’t think enough about that. That little delay that we had at the beginning,” he said. “Really helped us keep on the ground while that was happening, because we would have been up in the air by that time and then that thing would have been on fire. While we were in the air. That would have been that would have been a catastrophe.”
According to the National Business Aviation Association, in 2023, there were 208 issues with lithium-ion battery packs on flights.
The post Southwest Flight Evacuated After Cell Phone, Plane Seat Catch Fire appeared first on VICE.
The post Southwest Flight Evacuated After Cell Phone, Plane Seat Catch Fire appeared first on VICE.
