A female passenger on an Air Canada Boeing 787-9 was slightly injured when her cell phone caught fire while the aircraft was on the ground at Pearson Airport. The plane was about to push back for an early morning flight to Vancouver when the phone caught fire. The woman threw it into the aisle and tried to stamp it out before someone smothered the flames. A fire extinguisher finished the job.
The incident delayed the flight two hours but only the passengers in the immediate area of the fire got off the plane so crews could clean up the fire extinguisher residue. The aircraft was not damaged. Passengers were calm, but naturally concerned. “Any time you’re in a plane and you look behind you and there’s smoke and yelling, there’s a moment of real concern and fear,” said passenger Joe Cressy. “But frankly, thanks to the exceptionally professional response of the Air Canada staff, that concern went away and we were up in the air in two hours.”