iPhone Turns Glowing Red, Catches Fire During Flight

Australia’s Regional Express Airline news service reveals in a PDF report that a glowing red iPhone caused some concern shortly after flight ZL319 landed in Sidney as the phone started to emit "significant amounts of dense smoke."

As Australia’s largest independent regional airline, Regional Express (Rex) operates a fleet of more than 40 Saab 340 aircraft on roughly 1,300 weekly flights to 36 destinations. These include New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia and Queensland.

The airline’s detailed report reveals that Regional Express flight ZL319 operating from Lismore to Sydney experienced an incident after landing, “when a passenger’s mobile phone started emitting a significant amount of dense smoke, accompanied by a red glow.”

Regional Express says that, “In accordance with company standard safety procedures, the Flight Attendant carried out recovery actions immediately and the red glow was extinguished successfully.”

No one got hurt and all passengers disembarked in accordance with standard procedure. However, this doesn’t mean the matter wasn’t taken serious.

Rex reported the incident to the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) as well as the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA). The designated parties will aid in investigation and directions, said the report.

“The mobile phone in question appears to be an Apple iPhone […] and has been handed over to ATSB for analysis,” Rex said.

As the image above shows, the device is unquestionably an Apple iPhone. The only thing that isn't clear is whether ATSB is dealing with a 4S, or the older iPhone 4.

The phone is almost completely destroyed and it appears that the main cause of the fire was its battery, which isn’t at all surprising.

Lithium batteries have been the cause of major concern not only for Apple, but for numerous OEMs over the years. Their malfunction rate continues to stay high, despite constantly improving manufacturing technologies and materials.