If you drop your phone into your seat while on a flight, it can actually pose a major threat, so you should notify the flight attendant rather than trying to retrieve it yourself. We all carry our smartphones on our plane trips, and we can be a source of entertainment for us both on long and short trips. Also, many people choose on their mobile phones rather than printing digital boarding passes.
However, phones can actually pose a considerable threat on flights. When they are dropped on the side of the seat by passengers, it should not be retrieved by anyone other than the flight attendant for primary safety reasons. Rules have been enacted to prevent flyers from being seriously in danger following incidents such as a Qantas flight to Melbourne, Australia, when a passenger dropped a phone call and attempted to retrieve it themselves. During this flight in 2018, the man dropped the phone and tried to get it back, but he crushed it.
This was annoyance for a man who currently has a damaged phone, but it proved to be dangerous to put his fellow passengers at risk while in the air.
The phone called the flight attendant thankfully came to the rescue to control the situation and began smoking. This happened because the man's seat moved because he tried to get the phone back.
The phone has a powerful lithium battery that can be set on fire or even explode when crushed. Passengers should drop their phones and warn the cabin crew if they are unable to reach the site to avoid such incidents.
Over the past few years, many incidents have been reported, including phone batteries that fired on flights. In November 2024, a Southwest Airlines plane was evacuated after a firestorm of people's phones were fired.
As a result, one of the plane's seats also burned, causing passengers to get injured. One passenger who was already on the flight told CBS News that the smoke “filled the back of the cabin” and another passenger explained “panic” during the incident.
