A Lufthansa flight was forced to divert to Boston after a passenger’s iPad became “jammed” in a business class seat.
Flight LH453 from Los Angeles to Munich, Germany, made the “unscheduled stopover” in Boston six hours into the 11-hour flight on Wednesday (23 April).
Lufthansa confirmed that a trapped tablet caused the diversion after the device started to show “visible signs of deformation due to the seat’s movements”.
The crew and air traffic control decided to divert the flight to the Massachusetts city as a precaution to eliminate the potential risk of the device overheating.
Lithium-ion batteries commonly found in smartphones and power banks pose a fire risk to aircraft and confined cabin spaces if they are damaged or overheated.
For this reason, you cannot typically check power banks in your luggage due to safety concerns – these must be carried in cabin baggage only.
According to FlightAware data, the Airbus A380 departed from Los Angeles International (LAX) at 5.32pm, before diverting to Boston Logan International.
A Lufthansa Technik team met the flight to safely remove and inspect the damaged tablet before the flight continued on to Germany.
The 461 passengers onboard arrived in Munich at 4.35pm local time after the incident caused a three-hour delay.
A spokesperson for the airline said: “At Lufthansa, the safety of our passengers and crew is always our top priority. The diversion was a purely precautionary measure.”
It’s not the first time a misplaced device has sparked safety concerns in the cabin.
On 21 March, an Air France flight was forced to make a U-turn to Paris mid-air after a missing phone sparked safety concerns in the cabin.
Flight AF750 from Paris Orly to Pointe-a-Pitre, Guadeloupe, was over an hour into the almost nine-hour journey when a passenger reported a lost mobile phone.
According to an AirLive report, the Air France flight departed Paris at 11.51am CET before turning around and starting to circle at 31,000ft over the west coast of France.
The crew decided to return the aircraft to Paris Orly as a “precautionary measure” after the passenger’s mobile phone could not be located despite extensive search efforts, said the outlet.
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