Southwest flight returns to gate after passenger's phone ignites before takeoff
CBSN
A Southwest Airlines flight headed for Houston did not take off from El Paso, Texas, as planned Wednesday morning after one passenger's cell phone caught fire as the aircraft prepared for departure, the airline said.
The plane returned to its gate at El Paso International Airport around 7:50 a.m. local time, the Federal Aviation Administration told CBS News in a statement Thursday, confirming it will investigate what went wrong.
While the agency characterized the incident as a "passenger disturbance" that crew members reported during the flight's departure taxi, a spokesperson for Southwest Airlines said in a separate statement to CBS News that the fire appeared to stem from the battery inside a passenger's cell phone, which appeared to go up in flames as the plane moved down the tarmac.
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