A United Airlines flight was forced to divert when a passenger’s laptop slipped down the side of a seat and got stuck.
The flight left Heathrow and was scheduled to land in Washington but had to divert to Dublin when the laptop slid down and couldn’t be retrieved from the side of the business class seat.
The pilots on the flight number UA925 were forced to carry out the unscheduled landing in Ireland on November 19 due to a safety risk posed by the trapped item, amid fears it could start a blaze onboard.
The United Boeing 767 plane departed London at 4.19pm but was forced into the diversion to the Irish capital two hours later, where maintenance crews retrieved and inspected the device.
The flight eventually continued its journey over the Atlantic Ocean with 100 passengers and 10 crew, landing in Washington five hours behind schedule at 1.22am.
A United Airlines spokesperson said: “On November 19, United flight 925 safely landed in Dublin as a precaution to retrieve a customer’s laptop that had fallen in between the seat and the side wall.
“Maintenance crews retrieved the laptop, inspected the aircraft and the flight later departed for Washington Dulles.”
Laptops aboard planes have to be carefully monitored because of the batteries inside.
Lithium-ion batteries, which are present in laptops, are a risk on planes because any that overheat could uncontrollably heat up and cause a fire in the air.
It’s not the first time this year the airline has rerouted an aircraft due to a lost laptop.
In October, a United Airlines flight headed for Italy was forced to turn around and return to the US after a passenger’s laptop dropped through the cabin into the aircraft’s cargo hold.
The laptop was turned on and fell “behind a cabin wall panel and through a small gap leading to the cargo hold”, where it could not be accessed.
