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A Samsung Galaxy Note 2 smartphone began smoking during a commercial flight from Singapore to Chennai, India on Friday (23 September), India’s aviation regulator said. After smelling smoke coming from the overhead baggage compartments, passengers onboard the IndiGo flight, 6E-054, alerted the cabin crew who saw smoke and sparks coming from a Samsung Galaxy Note 2 phone in a piece of hand luggage.
The flight crew used a fire extinguisher on the phone before putting it in a container filled with water until the plane landed, the airline is owned by InterGlobe Aviation said in a statement.
“The aircraft made a normal landing at the Chennai airport, and all passengers were deplaned as per normal procedure,” IndiGo told Reuters.
The latest incident comes after Samsung’s worldwide recall of its new Note 7 phones due to faulty batteries causing the handsets to catch fire while they are being charged or in normal use. The company is offering free replacements or refunds for the handsets.
However, there have been no previous reports of similar issues facing the older Note 2 model that was first released in 2012.
“We are aware of an incident involving one of our devices. At Samsung, customer safety is our highest priority,” a Samsung spokesperson said. “We are in touch with the relevant authorities to gather more information and are looking into the matter.”
Following the incident, a spokesperson for India’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DCGA) said it plans to issue an advisory to airlines, warning all passengers to keep their Samsung Note phones switched off during the flight or avoid travelling with the devices altogether, the Guardian reports.
The aviation authority has also reportedly summoned the Samsung representatives to its New Delhi office to discuss the issue on Monday (26 September). Samsung has not yet released the Galaxy Note 7 in India.
Several airlines, including Virgin Australia and Qantas, and regulators across the globe have issued their own advisories urging passengers with the Note 7 note to charge their phones turned off during a flight. The Federal Aviation Authority in the US also issued a warning to passengers strongly advising them not to turn on or plug in their phone onboard.
the Samsung and the U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission issued an official recall of Samsung’s latest smartphone last week. The agency reported receiving 92 reports of the batteries overheating in the US alone, including 26 reports of burns and 55 reports of property damage.
The Korean smartphone maker’s Galaxy Note 7, the problems began just days after the device’s launch in mid-August with a slew of exploding device incidents, forcing the company to launch an official recall programme for all 2.5 million Note 7s sold. Samsung’s Note 7 woes saw the company take a massive $ 22bn (£16bn) hit to its market value in just 2 days as the company tried to launch its latest device about a month before rival Apple’s latest iPhone release.
The company recently announced that more than 500,000 new Galaxy Note 7 replacement devices have arrived in the US and shipped to carrier and retail stores to be available from September 21.
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