Aussie Aviation Officials Order Probe on Combusting iPhone
Australian authorities will look deeper on the report of an Apple iPhone that suddenly self-combusted shortly after the landing of a regional carrier last week.
In a statement issued on Tuesday by the Australian Transport and Safety Bureau (ATSB), a probe has been ordered by the country's travel safety agency in order to determine the circumstances surrounding the incident.
According to Agence France Presse (AFP), Regional Express (REX) officials have reported Friday last week that a passenger's iPhone surprisingly exploded minutes after the carrier's regional flighty reached its Lismore destination.
Reports furnished by the airline said that the subject smartphone "started emitting a significant amount of dense smoke, accompanied by a red glow," prior to its destruction.
It was not clear if the owner of the smartphone had tinkered on the device that could have sparked the explosion, which according to Apple is the first of such incident called to its attention.
This early, Apple has indicated that it will cooperate with concerned authorities that will handle the subsequent investigations.
ATSB officials, according to AFP, have taken the iPhone into its possession and told the news agency that they "will be undertaking a technical examination of (the device)."
"We will be interviewing directly involved parties and also in our technical examination of the phone we are going to be consulting with the manufacturer as well," the aviation safety watchdog told AFP.
In a report it filed before the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA), REX officials confirmed that the "mobile phone in question appears to be an Apple iPhone," and flight crews on-board the plane were able to handle the incident without causing injuries to any individuals.
Both ATSB and CASA officials have indicated that a probe of such nature will be first for them, with a CASA spokesman admitting that "we have no previous records of iPhones undergoing spontaneous self-ignition."