A passenger on board an Air Canada flight from Toronto to Vancouver suffered burns when her cellphone caught fire Thursday morning, just as the aircraft was preparing to leave Pearson International Airport.
At about 7 a.m., Air Canada flight 101 was sitting at the gate when a passenger’s phone “began to burn,” Air Canada spokesperson Isabelle Arthur told Radio Canada International in an email.
“The fire was immediately extinguished by crews and there was no damage to the aircraft.”
Robin Smith, a spokesperson for the Greater Toronto Airport Authority, confirmed that fire and emergency services were dispatched to the Boeing 787-9 with 266 passengers on board.
The phone’s owner was injured, and was treated by paramedics but was able to walk off the plane, Arthur said.
Peel Regional Paramedic Services said they treated a female patient in her 20s for 1st-degree burns to “a small part of her hand” and transported her to Etobicoke General Hospital.
Peel police confirmed Thursday afternoon that it was an LG phone that caught fire, CBC News reported. However, it’s not clear what caused the phone to catch fire.
In October 2016, LG rival Samsung issued a recall for its Galaxy Note 7 phones, which were found to have a battery issue that caused some of the phones to explode and catch fire.
Canada’s Transportation Safety Board (TSB) was made aware of the incident but has not decided yet whether it will investigate the matter, said TSB spokesperson Sophie Wistaff.
“We’re currently gathering information and assessing the occurrence, which means once we have all the information, then the decision would be taken if we would investigate or not,” she said in a phone interview with Radio Canada International.
The agency did not deploy a team of investigators to the site in Toronto because the plane departed after a two-hour delay, Wistaff said.
The aircraft arrived in Vancouver without incident, Arthur said.
With files from CBC News Toronto
For reasons beyond our control, and for an undetermined period of time, our comment section is now closed. However, our social networks remain open to your contributions.