Plane U-Turns After Passenger Loses Their Phone Mid-Flight, Forcing Everyone to Return Home

An Air France flight was forced to make a U-turn back to the airport where it originally took off mid-way through its flight after a passenger lost their phone, according to multiple news outlets.

Air France flight AF750 — which flies from Paris’ Orly Airport to Pointe-a-Pitre in Guadeloupe, a French-governed group of islands in the Caribbean — returned to Paris after about two hours in the air, according to The London Standard, which cited AirPlusNews.

The flight happened on Friday, March 21, according to flight tracking website, FlightAware. According to the website, the plane took off from Paris Orly airport at approximately 12 p.m., and returned to its gate at 2:37 p.m. 

According to the flight map, per FlightAware, the plane barely made it over the Atlantic Ocean, looping off the west coast of the country before returning back. The flight once again took off at 4:13 p.m. and completed its journey to Pointe-a-Pitre, per the website. The flight in its completion is usually about nine hours.

The plane was forced to return to Paris’ Orly Airport after a passenger lost their phone mid-flight and was unable to find it, according to The London Standard. Additional details on the incident were not immediately available.

PEOPLE has reached out to Air France for comment.

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Most flights have a strict policy when it comes to electronic devices in flight. According to Air France’s electronics policy, portable phones with fuel cells are only allowed in the “aircraft cabin” and if they do not exceed 100 Wh/battery they can also be placed in the hold.

Most flights also require passengers to turn off their devices or put them on “airplane mode”  during takeoff and landing as the cell phone signals could interfere with “critical aircraft instruments” including its navigation and communication systems, per the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

There were a total of 86 cell phone incidents involving smoke, fire or extreme heat on flights between March 2006 and February 2025, according to the FAA's website.

However, the largest number of these aviation electronic incidents are caused by battery packs. So far a total of 236 aviation incidents have occurred involving the lithium batteries in the devices between March 2006 and February 2025.

Last year there were 85 aviation incidents recorded related to electronic devices heating up, and in 2025, there have been 6 incidents so far, per the FAA.

Due to several incidents of portable chargers catching fire during flights, Hong Kong's Civil Aviation Department announced that it has banned the use of battery packs during a flight, per Bloomberg. Thai Airways also announced that it would ban passengers from using battery packs on their flights starting on March 15, 2025.