Samsung said the company is aware of the incident and is conducting a thorough investigation.
FIVE years after Samsung’s case of exploding Galaxy Note 7, a new phone released in 2020 is thought to have caught flames inside a flight that was forced to evacuate on slides.
As soon as the Alaska Airlines flight 751 from New Orleans to Seattle landed at Seattle-Tahoma International Airport on August 24 , a passenger’s phone “overheated and began sparking”.
A spokesperson for Alaska Airlines told Associated Press that the phone was a Samsung Galaxy A21, although the device was “burned beyond recognition.”
Despite the owner of the phone providing the phone model, there is no official confirmation that the smartphone was indeed Samsung’s budget phone.
When asked for a statement, Samsung said the company is aware of the situation and “conducting a thorough investigation.”
Even during the wake of the 2016 case of the Galaxy Note 7 battery flaw, the South Korean electronics giant reminds everyone that any device with a lithium-ion battery is a potential risk of fire explosion.
The flight crew extinguished the fire with a battery containment bag but were forced to deploy the evacuation slides as the cabin was hazy from smoke.
The phone was completely burnt and unidentifiable, according to the spokesperson for the Seattle Airport, Perry Cooper. He also confirmed that the two injured crew members have been treated.
After investigating the causes that haunted the Galaxy Note 7 in 2016, Samsung created an eight-point inspection process for its batteries.
Many Samsung users hope that the incident remains an isolated case and no other Galaxy A21 phones will light up again.
Tags: #Samsung, #smartphones, #GalaxyA21, #firehazard