Air France 777 Diverts To Paris Over Missing Cell Phone

Passenger needs to be banned from the airline for life. Keep track of your stuff, people!

most low quality comment here.

If a phone falls into the mechanism of a lay-flat seat airlines instruct passengers to get FA assistance in retrieving it to avoid a fire risk. If airlines start banning people for doing the right thing it would immediately begin incentivizing risky behavior.

I lost my phone in business class on an Emirates 777 BKK-SYD and the crew had my seat ripped apart in about 5 seconds with a jug of water on hand in case it caught fire. I think they just dump them in the jug if necessary. That AF diversion would have easily been 100-200k. Wild.

What a bizarre comment, Jack. I would say well done to the passenger for actually speaking up about this potential safety issue. Many people would likely think "eh, I'll look for it when we land."

unless I missed something in the article - but did they actually find the phone on the plane?
and a serious question - but what is the "data" (or do we not care about such things anymore) on a phone getting crushed and causing a fire?

(yes, I know lithium fires are different....)

airlines tell passengers to ask for FA assistance if ANY phone falls into the seat mechanism, not just lie flat seats.

The lesson learned here is that the crew need better training how to disassemble the seat. If a group the h can do it quickly, the crew should be able to do so it’s well.

Flight attendant here: there is NOTHING more annoying than AirPods lost in the seat. We are required to dig for them and if they aren’t found, the seat can’t be moved until maintenance personnel on the ground find the device. Many of us have begun carrying extendable magnets to help us dig.

Just to underscore how frequent this is, I recently had a passenger lose her phone in the seat 3 times in 1 hour. Needless to say she was told to put her phone inside her suitcase until landing.

I could never work in a job where I had to deal with the general public on a regular basis.

To quote Larry David “A customer is usually a moron and a*hole”

I'm surprised you didn't reference how Asian airlines are cracking down on power banks due to fires - they're getting banned or restricted by several airlines and I think there was just another fire on Hong Kong airlines?

Middle-aged guy rant:

I'm waiting for the monumental study that shows how these f***ing little pieces of plastic in our pockets have upended centuries of human progress. I hate them.

That said, I carry one every day and I tried to do a New Year's resolution with my family of locking them up for a month. No one bit and I don't blame them.

But I'm still going to try at some point. It still boggles my mind that I spent half my life without a cell phone and did perfectly fine. When I was 18, I went all over NYC doing things with amazing people in amazing places and all I had were my wallet and my keys on me.

Given how much Lucky has praised AF first class, I can't help but wonder if this was a first class passenger who realized they left their phone at the gate, and AF returned just so he could have it? #sarcasm

Seriously, though, does AF now just have to pay the EC 261 compensation to the entire flight? Any consequences for the passenger?

@ Jack -
I agree in theory but I was thinking along the lines of ban stupid / irrepsonsible / inconsiderate pax. But that would apply to at least half of the flying morons these days.... Guess it's not a good economic model !

Of course they were traveling to a third world country. No surprise.

Since when is France a third world country?

No compensation due in my opinion as this should be an easy case of being outside airline control, but the duty of care would apply. However, since all pax got to PTP on the same day, there won't be much of that applicable except for some small number of pax connecting elsewhere.

No consequences for the passenger, this clearly wasn't intentional.

Hopefully seat design companies are taking this into account and designing their future seats so it is harder to lose cellphone into the seat.

If you design something to be idiot proof, the universe will design a better idiot.

Do not believe it. I had a similar situation from CDG-JFK and lost my cellphone with AA at takeoff as cellphone was on the Biz table and slid under my seat. I spoke to crew. During the flight, they looked, they could not find. I was in the last row of Biz so it was against the wall panel behind my seat. I made a Lost Claim and they never found it.
I really do not think many crews think it is a safety issue- at least on American Airlines.

Wow. Banks? Realtors? Architects? et al.
You are amzing with your bubble life.

Actually incorrect. They will pay as it’s a commercial decision. Eur400 for Metropolitan France ( Guadeloupe) if over 4 hrs.

Spot on. I will sadly confess that one of my airpods disappeared on AF flight in J and the crew spent about 45mins dismantling the seat trying to get it. Since then i've resorted to using my Bose noise cancelling headphones.

I lost my phone in the seat on La Compagnie flying into Milan Malpensa. It was towards the end of the flight but the FA crew couldn't locate it. Even the passenger sitting behind me agreed they heard it hit the floor inside the seat. Well no one on board could find it, so they just had me switch seats so the mechanism wouldn't be used for the rest of the flight. Upon landing, they had me wait for maintenance and when the maintenance crew member got there I told him in Italian exactly where I heard the thump. A few minutes later and there it was, standing upright inside the seat on the floor. I was so thankful I wanted to give him a nice tip but they're not allowed to accept tips.

Has there been a fire or many fires to have this kind of reaction? I've never heard of such a fire before or the risk of one.