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- A United Airlines flight to Italy returned to Washington, DC, earlier this month.
- Someone’s laptop got stuck down a sidewall of the plane, according to an ATC recording.
- Airlines take lost or hard-to-access devices like laptops very seriously due to the risk of fire.
A plane going from Washington, DC, to Italy became a flight to nowhere after a passenger’s laptop went missing on board.
United Airlines Flight 126 took off from Washington Dulles International Airport on October 15. It was bound for Rome, usually up to nine hours away.
But just one hour into the journey, the Boeing 767 U-turned over the Atlantic Ocean. It was only about 50 miles off Cape Cod, Massachusetts, per data from Flightradar24.
An audio recording published by LiveATC.net and uploaded to YouTube appears to show the reason for the diversion.
“We have a minor situation here with a passenger who has somehow dropped a laptop down the sidewall into the cargo pit of the airplane,” one of the pilots tells air traffic control.
“We don’t know the status of it, we can’t access it, we can’t see it,” he added. “So our decision is to return to Dulles and find this laptop before we can continue over the ocean.”
The plane landed back at Washington Dulles shortly after midnight local time, just over two hours after taking off from there.
It departed again at 3:23 a.m. and ultimately reached Rome over four hours behind schedule, according to Flightradar24.
United Airlines did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent by Business Insider.
As laptops contain lithium batteries, they pose a potential fire risk.
If overcharged or damaged, it can result in thermal runaway, leading to rapid temperature increase.
And because the laptop was inaccessible, the crew might not know if it had been damaged or caught fire until it was too late.
That’s the same reason airlines require electronics to be carried in your carry-on rather than your checked luggage.
This isn’t the first time a trapped device has forced a diversion.
In 2024, another transatlantic United Airlines flight diverted to Ireland after a laptop got stuck in a business-class seat.
And this April, a Lufthansa flight from Los Angeles to Munich changed course to Boston after a passenger’s tablet got stuck in their seat.
This year has also seen many airlines tighten their power bank rules.
“There has been a significant growth in customers using power banks in recent years, resulting in an increasing number of lithium battery-related incidents on board flights across the wider aviation industry,” Emirates said.
