United Flight to Rome Redirected Over Lost Laptop

Every few months, a story develops in the world of aviation that reminds us all how concerned airlines and regulators are about the possiblity of battery fires on board planes. Earlier this year, the possibility of a tablet bursting into flames within the cabin prompted a Lufthansa flight to make an emergency stop in Boston. This month, it was United’s turn to have an international flight make a non-international emergency stop.

As Ben Schlappig reports at One Mile at a Time, a flight en route from Washington, D.C. to Rome made an unexpected stop at its airport of origin. The reason for the rerouting was relatively unique — though that’s probably little comfort to the passengers who were delayed along the way. A passenger in the cabin who was using their laptop managed to drop it in a way that caused it to fall into the plane’s cargo area.

If you’ve flown at any time recently, you’re probably aware that putting devices with lithium batteries in your checked bag is frowned upon. In an overview of flight security issues for The New York Times, Claire Fahy noted that in cases where lithium battery-powered devices are allowed to be checked, they must be turned off. Presumably, a laptop that was just in use would still be on at the time that it entered the cargo hold, making it a potential fire hazard. And thus, a little over two hours into its flight, United Airlines flight 126 made a U-turn.

Damaged Tablet on Board Flight Prompts Unexpected Landing

At issue: concerns over a battery fire

One Mile at a Time’s reporting on the re-routed flight has one other unnerving detail about the laptop: apparently it landed in a place in the cargo hold where it would have been especially difficult to extinguish a fire. (Why there are parts of the cargo hold where this is the case at all is probably a question for the aeronautical engineers.) The flight in question wound up arriving in Rome four hours later than expected.

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Tobias Carroll

Tobias Carroll lives and writes in New York City, and has been covering a wide variety of subjects — including (but not limited to) books, soccer and drinks — for many years. His writing has been published by the likes of the Los Angeles Times, Pitchfork, Literary Hub, Vulture, Punch, the New York Times and Men’s Journal. At InsideHook, he has…