The Real Reason You Can’t Retrieve Your Phone if It Falls Between Your Airplane Seat (2024)

It’s for your own safety.

Passengers on recent flights may have noticed a new addition to the standard safety briefings given before takeoff. On some routes, flight attendants now instruct passengers not to retrieve their cell phones if they fall between the seats. Instead, they instruct passengers to alert a flight attendant for assistance.

While most flight attendants do their best to make sure all passengers have a comfortable flight, asking for help isn’t a suggestion to keep passengers from exerting themselves. Cell phones pose a serious safety threat if not handled with care on airplanes.

What’s the Danger?

If a cell phone gets stuck between seats on some airplanes, it may catch fire.

“Mobile phones have lithium batteries, which are notorious for being flammable and explosive,” says Duke Armitage, an airline pilot and founder of Aviamonde.

While airlines aren’t usually concerned about cell phones spontaneously catching fire, Armitage explains that “seat mechanisms may accidentally crush the phone if a passenger attempts to retrieve it.” This can cause the cell phone to overheat and catch fire. Although some passengers may disregard a flight attendant’s warning and attempt to retrieve their phone, that mistake could disrupt the entire flight or worse. “The risk is real and documented,” Armitage says.

If a phone falls between the flight seats, don’t panic.

“Flight attendants are trained to operate the different types of seats in our cabins, and in some cases, they can manually override certain seat functions to retrieve a lost item safely,” according to a spokesperson for American Airlines. Adding that aside from the risk of fire, it’s wise to ask a flight attendant for help retrieving a phone that has slipped because “we wouldn’t want customers to injure themselves while reaching for a lost item in between seats or in a tight place.”

Is It Ever Safe To Retrieve Your Phone?

Attentive passengers may notice that flight attendants only warn passengers about retrieving their phones on some flights. That’s because not all planes have mechanized seats that can crush cell phone batteries. A spokesperson for Southwest Airlines says that “given our all-economy product” that lacks mechanized seats, Southwest’s flight attendants do not warn passengers about retrieving their phones because the risk of a cell phone catching on fire mid-flight is much lower.

A spokesperson for Alaska Airlines explains that their flight attendants don’t provide warnings about phone retrieval because, like Southwest Airlines, none of their planes currently have mechanized seats that pose a risk.

Do Devices Other Than Cell Phones Pose a Risk?

It’s not just cell phones that pose a threat. Any device with a lithium-ion battery poses a risk of catching fire if it falls between mechanical seats on an airplane. Tablets, e-readers, digital cameras, e-cigarettes and vaping devices, battery packs, some medical devices, portable battery packs, and some children’s toys also contain lithium-ion batteries, so airline passengers need to be cautious when flying with these items as well.

Although starting a fire on a plane with a cell phone seems far-fetched, it has happened. In 2018, a passenger on a Qantas flight inadvertently crushed his cell phone when he moved his seat in an attempt to retrieve his phone after it fell. The phone began smoking, and flight attendants used fire extinguishers to contain the danger. Although the airline never confirmed there was a fire, an eyewitness reported that the passenger’s seat was “completely destroyed.”

In 2023, another cell phone caught fire on a British Airways flight when a passenger’s cell phone became lodged in his reclining seat. Despite a pre-flight warning not to attempt to retrieve a stuck phone, the passenger moved his seat forward, causing the phone to overheat and catch fire. The cabin crew extinguished the fire and made an emergency landing so that they could safely retrieve the scorched phone and prevent another fire.

In May 2024, a United Airlines flight was diverted after a laptop became stuck in a business-class seat. Flight attendants could not safely retrieve the laptop while the plane was in the air. Because of the safety hazard posed by the stuck laptop, the airplane was forced to make an emergency landing. Once on the ground, engineers freed the laptop, and the flight continued the following day.

How Often Are There Incidents Involving Lithium-Ion Batteries?

From 2006 to May 2024, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) verified more than 530 incidents involving lithium-ion batteries causing smoke, fire, or extreme heat. The number of incidents involving lithium-ion batteries is increasing every year. The majority of these incidents involved battery packs, followed by e-cigarettes, vaping devices, and cell phones.

In 2020, there were just 39 incidents. By 2023, that number almost doubled. Just in the first five months of 2024, the FAA verified more than 20 incidents involving lithium-ion batteries and was investigating nearly a dozen additional incidents.

What Happens if Your Cell Phone Gets Lodged Between Airplane Seats?

What happens after you notify a flight attendant that your phone has fallen between the seats depends on several factors. These include your airline’s policy, which phase your flight is in, and where your phone is lodged, says Robert Antolin, COO at App in the Air.

“Flight attendants will assess the situation to determine the safest way to retrieve your device,” Antolin explains. “Sometimes it may be a simple seat adjustment, removing a cushion or seat cover, or using ‘grabber arms’ or tongs to reach into a tight space.”

However, sometimes, getting your device back is more complicated.

“When your device is deeply lodged, or in a hard-to-reach spot, they contact the ground or maintenance crew at the destination airport who have specialized tools and advanced knowledge of seat mechanisms to assist in retrieval,” Antolin adds.

Do Passengers Get Their Devices Back During Flights?

While everyone would like to get their device back during their flight, that’s not always possible. Some airlines have policies that prevent items from being retrieved during flights “for safety and to prevent disruptions to other passengers,” says Anotlin. “Flight attendants cannot leave their seats to assist you during take-off and landing. Even if your airline does not have a policy in place that prevents a flight attendant from retrieving your phone if the phone is lodged deep enough in the seat, you may need to be patient and wait for a ground or maintenance crew to retrieve it post-flight.”

How Can You Keep Your Cell Phone Safe on a Flight?

Given the safety risk posed by cell phones and other items with lithium-ion batteries, it’s worth taking some extra steps to keep them safe during flights. Justin Crabbe, a commercial pilotand CEO ofJettly, recommends “keeping phones, tablets, and loose items secure in a bag or pocket during taxi, takeoff, and landing.”

Crabbe advises passengers to “be extra cautious when retrieving items from the seat back pocket to avoid knocking things down.” If something does fall, he says not to panic: “Make a note of the row it fell at and notify a flight attendant right away.”

Although going without your cell phone on a flight is inconvenient, attempting to get it back quickly isn’t worth the risk to other passengers and the flight crew.