Always keep your phone in flight mode
Think of all the things that stresses you out when you fly. Now imagine on top of all of that, your iPhone suddenly bursts into flames. That’s exactly what Alaska Air passenger Anna Crail experienced while on the way to her spring break vacation in Hawaii, 90 minutes away from tropical paradise.
“All of the sudden there was like 8-inch flames coming out of my phone. When it started I thought we were going down, and I was like, ‘oh my god, there’s a fire on the plane,'” she said.
Crail was watching a movie on her iPhone 6 when it suddenly caught fire. What she did next probably didn’t endear her to any of her fellow passengers.
“I flipped it off onto the ground and it got under someone’s seat, and the flames were just getting higher and a bunch of people stood up,” she added.
Thankfully the Air Alaska crew managed to put out the flames before it could get any bigger and no one on board the flight was hurt.
As for the cause of the phone catching on fire? There’s no definite answer. Gadgets have been known to spontaneously catch on fire before, for a multitude of reasons – bad battery, shoddy chargers and whatnot. Aviation expert John Nance says that you should keep your phones in flight mode when you’re jetting off somewhere, as searching for a signal the whole time can wear out your battery.
