One person was slightly injured when a mobile phone caught fire in the plane, which was on its way to Bergen on 11 June. The crew of the Wizz Air plane had their mobile phones cooled down and extinguished the fire with water. The phone was secured and monitored on the rest of the flight. The carpet in the cabin was damaged, and the phone was completely destroyed. The Accident Investigation Board Norway is now investigating the incident. – When there is an aircraft with smoke development or fire on board, we see it as a serious aviation incident and a case for the AIBN, says director William J. Bertheussen. The Accident Investigation Board Norway is now collecting information about the mobile phone that caught fire on the plane to Bergen in June, according to director William J. Bertheussen. Photo: Stian Strøm / news Collecting information He can not say when the plane was on its way from or why the mobile phone caught fire. – We will now collect information about what happened, how it happened, how it was handled and possibly what can be done to prevent similar events in the future. The plane was in contact with the tower at Flesland Airport. – We were informed about an incident that the crew handled themselves. The flight captain did not ask for increased preparedness at the airport, says airport director Helge Eidsnes. Avinor was not directly involved, but crews from Flesland inspected the plane after landing and took care of the mobile phone. It and the picture are passed on to the AIBN. The AIBN will now write a report that will be ready within a year. The aircraft is operated by the Hungarian low-cost airline Wizz Air, and is a passenger aircraft of the type Airbus A319 / 320/321. The aircraft in the picture is not the aircraft in question. Photo: Simon Skjelvik Brandseth / news news has sent questions to Wizz Air about the incident, but has so far not received an answer. Mobile phones have caught fire in the past Similar incidents have happened in the past. At the latest in January this year, the mobile phone of a passenger on a Norwegian plane started smoking on the way from Amsterdam to Oslo. The passenger burned himself on the phone. In 2016, airlines introduced a ban on using Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 on board their aircraft. The reason was that the battery could explode during charging. Håvard Vikheim from the Civil Aviation Authority of Norway says that such fires on aircraft are rare and that the crew is trained to handle it. – Such a type of fire must be isolated and burn out in a controlled manner. In the cabin, the object will be placed in a metal bucket with a wet blanket over it. He therefore recommends packing mobile phones and similar electronic equipment in hand luggage and not in checked luggage. This is what a Samsung Galaxy Note 7 phone looked like after it caught fire in 2016. Samsung stopped selling the model shortly after such incidents occurred. Photo: Shawn L. Minter / Ap
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