Samsung to examine smartphone that caught fire on USA plane

Samsung's smoking phone issue may have just gotten worse.

A Louisville to Baltimore Southwest Airlines flight was forced to vacate their seats because of a "smoking" Samsung Galaxy Note 7, according to The Verge.

After Samsung did a voluntary recall on its Galaxy Note 7 device last September and was able to replace 60 percent of it up to date, there is a report that a deemed safe Note 7 device in a passenger's pocket caught fire while boarding a Southwest flight.

A day after a smartphone caught fire aboard a Southwest Airlines plane at the Louisville global airport in Kentucky, US, a statement by the company said until the device is retrieved, it can not confirm whether the incident involves the new Note 7.

The Note 7 received a global recall after numerous claims of explosions and fires when charging, with 2.5 million devices being offered an exchange. An investigation was opened by the US Consumer Product Safety Commission, according to another report by The Verge.

A Samsung device overheated and began to smoke, Metro Arson Capt. Kevin Fletcher said. The owner also confirmed that it was indeed a replacement phone he picked up from an AT&T shop recently.

"It's either a statistical fluke in the manufacturing process where there are some local hotspots or there are perhaps some metal shavings, some kind of a shorting", he said in a previous interview with TIME. "That means that while they're forcing current through it, somehow there is a side reaction that is very different from just recharging the battery".

Earlier this summer, the FAA officially banned the use of Galaxy Note 7s on planes as part of a broader-reaching prohibition covering "lithium batteries and lithium battery powered devices when they are the subject of a safety recall or when the lithium battery has been identified by the manufacturer as having a safety defect".

Source: Samsung to examine smartphone that caught fire on USA plane