A United Airlines flight from London was forced to divert to Dublin after a passenger’s laptop slipped down the side of a business-class seat.
Flight UA925 from Heathrow to Washington Dulles made an unscheduled landing in Ireland on 19 November due to a safety risk posed by the trapped item.
According to FlightAware data, the United Boeing 767 departed London at 4.19pm and diverted 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 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.”
Lithium-ion batteries, which are present in laptops, are a risk on planes, as a damaged, overheated, or defective device could uncontrollably heat up and cause a fire.
Diverting is standard procedure on transatlantic flights when a lithium battery-powered device is stuck in a seat.
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 to Italy was forced to 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, said the airline.
An air traffic control recording of the incident, per You Can See ATC, hears the pilot request to turn around as a precaution due to a “minor situation with a passenger who has somehow dropped a laptop that was on, down the sidewall into the cargo pit area of the aircraft”.
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