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Apple on Friday said that it's open to cooperation with French authorities, who are exploring the possibility that two of the company's devices were linked to the crash of EgyptAir Flight 804 in 2016.
The flight's first officer may have plugged an iPhone 6s and an iPad mini 4 into the wrong socket in the jet's cockpit, French officials told Le Parisien. That may have triggered runaway heat, in turn sparking a fire.
At the moment, the investigation is being helped by an engineer from the French National Center for Scientific Research, as well as two people fron the French defense ministry, including a physics professor and an engineer specializing in batteries. Results from the investigation should be submitted by Sept. 30.
Apple told the Parisien that it wasn't aware of evidence linking its devices to the EgyptAir disaster.
Batteries in the company's products are occasionally blamed for causing fires. Most recently an Australian woman complained that her Beats headphones exploded mid-flight, but Apple blamed the incident on her using third-party batteries.
The company has had to admit fault in the past, for instance instituting not one but two replacement programs for the first-generation iPod nano.
EgyptAir Flight 804 vanished over the Mediterranean on May 19 last year, killing 66 people. The jet was flying from Paris to Cairo at 37,000 feet when it suddenly veered 90 degrees to the left, then 360 degrees to the right, and began dropping altitude.
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28 Comments
Don't iPhone and iPad use same charging cable and power output. Seems dumb they have specific ports for each device in a plane.
I'm not buying this excuse that an iPhone or iPad was responsible. Based on the flight recorder data they knew there was a fire in/near the cockpit with actual sensors showing smoke (fire) in the toilet behind the cockpit, in the avionics bay (under the floor of the cockpit) and in the cockpit itself
Not sure how a possible iPhone/iPad catching fire in the cockpit would somehow cause fires to appear in two different locations, especially the avionics bay which is fairly well protected.
The source article claims they are going to procure several iPhones and iPads (new and used) of the exact same type the copilot had to test them. Not sure how they plan on testing them, since fires are very rare with iOS devices and they're not going to be able to replicate a fire with a handful of devices. And how can you plug an iOS device into "the wrong socket"? Do these planes have USB ports in the cockpit? Or maybe AC outlets you can plug a charger or other accessory into? These should be protected with fuses or similar.
And even if an iPhone/iPad caught fire, I find it hard to believe the flight crew couldn't extinguish it. These are trained professionals, not some joe-blow consumer woken in the middle of the night with a phone burning on their night stand and standing their dumbfounded wondering what to do about it.
The whole thing doesn't make sense.
They have halon fire extinguishers on flight decks. I can't see a mobile device starting a fire so quickly that trained aviation professionals couldn't extinguish it before it ruined the navigation controls.