A Southwest Airlines flight headed for Houston did not take off from El Paso, Texas, as planned Wednesday morning after one passenger’s cellphone caught fire as the aircraft prepared for departure, the airline said.
The plane returned to its gate at El Paso International Airport around 7:50 a.m. local time, the Federal Aviation Administration told CBS News in a statement Thursday, confirming it will investigate what went wrong.
While the agency characterized the incident as a “passenger disturbance” that crew members reported during the flight’s departure taxi, a spokesperson for Southwest Airlines said in a separate statement to CBS News that the fire appeared to stem from the battery inside a passenger’s cellphone, which appeared to go up in flames as the plane moved down the tarmac.
“Southwest Airlines Flight 2112 returned to the gate at El Paso International Airport yesterday morning after the battery inside a passenger’s cell phone apparently ignited,” the Southwest spokesperson said in that statement.
The flight crew was able to extinguish the fire and other passengers on the plane “disembarked normally” once it arrived back at the gate, according to the spokesperson. The statement said Southwest was working with federal and local agencies investigating the incident.
Passengers on Flight 2112 were eventually flown to Houston on a different Southwest plane, according to the airline spokesperson, who added, “Nothing is more important to Southwest than the Safety of our Customers and Employees.”
It was unclear whether other federal agencies would open probes into the flight’s departure issue outside of the FAA.
Kathryn Krupnik
contributed to this report.
Emily Mae Czachor is a news editor at CBSNews.com. She typically covers breaking news, extreme weather and issues involving social and criminal justice. Emily Mae previously wrote for outlets like the Los Angeles Times, BuzzFeed and Newsweek.
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