Air France 777 Diverts To Paris Over Missing Cell Phone

A long haul Air France flight diverted after a passenger misplaced their cell phone. You read that right.

Air France flight returns to Paris over misplaced cell phone

This incident happened today (March 21, 2025), and involves Air France flight AF750, scheduled to fly from Paris Orly (ORY) to Pointe-a-Pitre (PTP), with a total of 375 passengers onboard. The 4,199-mile flight across the Atlantic was operated by a 17-year-old Boeing 777-300ER with the registration code F-GSQX.

The flight took off from Paris at 12:01PM, as scheduled, and climbed to 32,000 feet. The 777 flew across France, and then across the English Channel. However, not long after takeoff, a passenger reportedly misplaced their phone. Despite the best efforts of passengers and crew, the phone couldn’t be retrieved.

Most people might not assume that’s a big deal, but this poses a risk of a fire, especially if a phone gets lost somewhere (whether it’s a seat or some other contraption), and then becomes damaged, and potentially causes a fire.

We’ve seen airlines increasingly add restrictions on carrying power banks, given their lithium-ion batteries. However, the risk goes way beyond that, and cell phones pose a similar risk to power banks.

As a result of this, the crew made the decision to return to Paris. The plane touched down there at 2:08PM, 2hr7min after it first departed.

At that point, ground personnel boarded the plane to try to locate the missing phone. Presumably they had luck, because the same aircraft once again departed at 4:13PM, just over two hours after it landed in Paris. The aircraft is now scheduled to arrive in Pointe-a-Pitre at 7:18PM, just under four hours behind its scheduled 3:25PM arrival.

That’s at least a pretty impressive recovery. I’m curious if the same crew could still operate the flight, or if the airline found a replacement crew that quickly. I’d assume that it’s the former, but who knows.

The airline industry is a tough business, eh?

Airlines are low margin, highly cyclical businesses under the best of circumstances. But it’s incredible to think just how many challenges airlines face in their operations. Many travelers carry multiple electronic devices with them, and even losing just one of those devices could be such a risk to a plane that it prompts a diversion.

Think of all the costs incurred here, from the fuel wasted, to the duty of care for passengers, etc. All over a single phone going missing.

As the risk of fire becomes an increasingly frequent concern for airlines, one wonders if we might start to see stricter regulations on cell phones. I don’t know what that would look like, but this is a tough situation to manage.

You have people traveling with a lot more electronics, and at the same time, you have (premium) seats that are becoming increasingly complex, with more motorized functions. This increases the risk of passengers losing electronics, and even more, it increases the risk of a fire.

Bottom line

An Air France Boeing 777 had to return to Paris after a cell phone went missing shortly after takeoff. It’s not clear where exactly the phone ended up, but the crew erred on the side of caution, and returned to Paris. Ground staff were able to recover the phone, and the plane departed around two hours later. In the end, the flight will be landing at its destination around four hours late.

What do you make of this Air France diversion incident?