Lately there have been a higher than normal number of flights forced to turn around and return to the airport that the plane departed from for frightening reasons. Smoke in the cabin and/or cockpit has been one reason why the pilots were forced to make a U-turn. Unruly passengers are another reason with one trying to open the emergency exit to walk off the jet mid-flight.
Just yesterday, a packed Air France flight (AF750) left Paris for a nine-hour flight to Guadeloupe and had to return to Paris after just one hour. Was there an issue with the Boeing 777-300ER that endangered the 375 passengers and 12 crew members onboard? No. According to various media reports and a tweet from content creator Dexerto, a passenger lost his smartphone on the plane.
Air France officials said that as soon as the plane landed in Paris, teams were sent on the plane to help find the missing handset. Once the phone is found, a new departure time will be announced. We would love to know what is so special about this particular phone that it caused a plane to turn around mid-flight. Had this been your phone or my phone, the plane would have continued flying straight to Guadeloupe and we would have been told to leave a local phone number in case the device was discovered during the post-flight cleanup.
A missing phone caused an Air France flight to return to Paris after one hour. Image credit-X
A passenger’s missing smartphone caused AF750 to make an unscheduled return to Paris one hour into a nine-hour flight. | Image credit-One Mile At a Time
As for AF750, it would appear that Air France was able to find the missing phone as the flight took off from Paris two hours after it landed back where it started. The arrival time in Guadeloupe was just under four hours past the original ETA.
