Smartmobe made 'intermittent bright flashes and a hissing noise' in Biz class seat

Perhaps more airlines could install more phone pockets on seats: two more instances have emerged of crushed smartphones putting aircraft at risk.

The news comes from the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB), which is warning that passengers on flights have to take better care of their phones.

Descending into London on October 21, the ATSB release says, a passenger had a phone on charge when it got crushed by their moving seat and put on the lithium battery's usual fire-and-brimstone act.

“Once the charging cable was removed, the smoke started to dissipate. The phone was placed in a metal bin and covered with water”, the ATSB release says.

The safety regulator doesn't say which airline was involved.

The other incident, on the same day, happened in Sydney, and involved a passenger that lost track of their phone while sleeping.

The passenger “asked a cabin crew member to help retrieve his phone from the seat after it got stuck there while he was sleeping”, the release says, and the resulting damage meant it put on a flash-and-bang act until it was put in a steel jug of water.

The ATSB has already warned airlines about squashed phones, after two earlier incidents in America on QANTAS flights.

One was near the John F Kennedy airport, and today's report from the ATSB notes another incident in May, on a flight from Sydney to Dallas.

QANTAS is already warning passengers not to look for phones if they lose them. ®