Is your carry-on putting flights at risk? United flight turns back mid-Atlantic after passenger’s lithium-ion laptop slips into inaccessible cargo area

A United Airlines transatlantic flight bound for Rome made an unusual U-turn and returned to Washington Dulles Airport on Oct. 15 after a passenger’s laptop fell through a gap in the cabin wall and into a portion of the aircraft’s cargo area that the crew could not access, according to air-traffic recordings and airline tracking data. The lithium-ion laptop posed a safety risk to passengers after it fell near a sensitive section of the aircraft.

“We have a minor situation here with a passenger who has somehow dropped a laptop that was on … down the sidewall into the cargo pit area of the airplane,” one of the pilots told Air Traffic Control (ATC) when they were notified.