United Flight Makes Emergency Landing After Cellphone Charger Catches Fire in Passenger’s Bag
A United Airlines flight heading from New Jersey to the Bahamas was diverted to Florida on Wednesday after a cellphone charger caught fire inside a passenger’s carry-on bag, officials said.
Flight 1456, which left Newark Liberty International Airport just before 8 a.m., made an emergency landing in Daytona Beach about two hours later with no damages to the aircraft or injuries to passengers, airport official said in a Facebook post late Wednesday morning.
The small fire was apparently contained to the passenger’s bag.
Emergency personnel met the aircraft as soon as it landed in Florida and customers remained on board during an inspection, a United spokesman told the Daily News.
“We appreciate the quick work of our employees on board to keep our customers and fellow employees safe,” the carrier said in a brief statement.
The Airbus 320, which was carrying 130 passengers and five crew members, landed in Nassau’s international airport just before 1 p.m. without further incident, according to the flight-tracking website FlightAware.
This is not the first time an overheated cellphone gadget disrupts a flight.
In November, a Southwest Airlines plane was evacuated just before take-off because a battery inside a passenger’s backpack overheated and started smoking at Chicago’s Midway International Airport.
A few months earlier, a cellphone battery pack ignited a fire in a passenger seat aboard a Virgin Atlantic flight, forcing the London-bound plane to divert to Boston shortly after take-off from New York’s JFK airport.
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