iPhone battery starts smoking on a plane, despite no smoking signs

What’s a flight attendant to do when an iPhone decides to ignore the no smoking signs and spark one mid-flight? On a flight from Lismore to Sydney, Australia, an iPhone spontaneously self-combusted, and began exhaling its dense smoke into the crowd. Get this, the phone even had a nice red ember, err, glow going on according to eye-witness accounts.

A press release from Regional Express indicates:

Regional Express (Rex) flight ZL319 operating from Lismore to Sydney today had an occurrence after landing, when a passenger’s mobile phone started emitting a significant amount of dense smoke, accompanied by a red glow … In accordance with company standard safety procedures, the Flight Attendant carried out recovery actions immediately and the red glow was extinguished successfully… All passengers and crew on board were unharmed.

Luckily the almost-fire started once the plan had landed. Listen, iPhones need their nicotine fix too, even after their short flights. Let’s not judge, okay?

Joshua is the Content Marketing Manager at BuySellAds. He’s also the founder of Macgasm.net. And since all that doesn’t quite give him enough content to wrangle, he’s also a technology journalist in his spare time, with bylines at PCWorld, Macworld and TechHive.