Prankster creates Wi-Fi hotspot: “Galaxy Note7” in-flight, captain threatens to land early

As you know, the Samsung Galaxy Note7 is totally forbidden from boarding any US airline due to safety concerns of batteries that have ignited due to a flaw in their design. This is as per the US DOT (Deparment of Transportation) who issued the nationwide ban.

Well, someone thought it would be fun to see people’s reactions when they renamed their own portable Wi-Fi Hotspot to ‘Samsung Galaxy Note 7_1097’ which raised dire concerns mid-flight the overnight service from San Francisco to Boston. A passenger was aboard the Virgin Airlines flight that tweeted a screenshot of the Wi-Fi network seen onboard.

Open my laptop on the plane and notice a Galaxy Note 7 wifi hotspot https://t.co/y1csn9gOsZ pic.twitter.com/9Z5IJULuPs

— Lucas Wojciechowski (@lucaswoj) December 20, 2016

Once the crew found out, a call went out for the passenger with a Note7 to press their call button. When nobody fessed up, the captain announced that the plane would have to make an emergency landing so they can search the cabin and get rid of the Note7 that was supposedly on board.

Once the jokester had enough, they confessed to the crew that there was no Note7 phone and that they had just changed the name on their mobile hotspot to the name of the forbidden phone.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have found the device. Luckily only the name of the device was changed to Galaxy Note7. It was not a Galaxy Note7. - flight crew

According to BBC, no further action or punishment was taken on the passenger with the phony device. What a way to cause not only an inconvenience to those on board, and on a red-eye flight, no less, but also scare the crew into thinking there might have been a real emergency, especially when people have seen videos of these phones fizzling up and catching fire. A fire that would be dangerous to need to contain on an aircraft during flight.

Source | Via