Passenger’s lost laptop forces United flight carrying 216 people from US to Italy to turn around

A United Airlines flight carrying more than 200 people from Northern Virginia to Rome turned around near the United States coast after a passenger dropped their laptop and could not retrieve it. Photo / United Airlines

A United Airlines flight carrying more than 200 people from Northern Virginia to Rome turned around near the United States coast after a passenger dropped their laptop and could not retrieve it.

The airline said in a statement that the computer “had fallen behind a cabin wall panel and through a small gap leading to the cargo hold”, prompting the pilots to divert the October 15 flight back to Washington Dulles International Airport as a precaution.

In a conversation with air traffic controllers in Boston, one of the pilots on Flight 126 described the incident as a “minor situation” with the laptop, which was turned on when it fell into the cargo area. The plane was southeast of Boston when it turned back.

“We don’t know the status of it, we can’t access it, we can’t see it,” he said in a recording saved by the You can see ATC aviation channel on YouTube.

“So our decision is to return to Dulles and find this laptop before we can continue over the ocean.”

The pilot said he was not declaring an emergency and did not need special services at the airport. He said he was making the call out of an “abundance of caution” because the lithium battery would be in an area of the Boeing 767 that wasn’t near a fire suppression system.

Said the air traffic controller: “I’ve never heard anything like that before. Good story to tell at the pilot lounge.”

United said that maintenance crews were able to find the laptop and that the flight left for Rome after an inspection.

Flight tracking site FlightAware shows that the plane with 216 passengers took off at 10.22pm local time on October 15 and landed back at Dulles a little more than two hours later. It ultimately took off again just before 3.30am, landing in Rome about 4½ hours later than scheduled.

The incident was the latest example of an airline working to pre-emptively address the threat of overheated lithium batteries.

Southwest Airlines bans passengers from charging their devices with a power bank inside a carry-on bag.

Many airlines in Asia do not allow passengers to use portable chargers in flight.

Passengers are not allowed to put vape pens or spare lithium batteries in checked bags and must keep them in the cabin, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

Despite the controller’s comment, there have been instances in the past when airlines have diverted flights because of personal electronics.

Earlier this year, two Air France flights to the Caribbean turned around because passengers had lost their cellphones. The airline wanted to avoid a safety hazard in case of an overheating device.

Hassan Shahidi, president and chief executive of the Flight Safety Foundation, told the Post earlier this year that if a phone was stuck in a seat, pressure could cause it to heat up or catch fire.

“Any pressure on the phone if it’s left unattended inside the seat, it’s actually a hazard,” he said at the time.

“It’s a very difficult space to get in there if it starts catching fire or smoking.”

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