by Donald Wood
Last updated: 12:45 AM ET, Fri August 3, 2018
A phone fire on a Ryanair plane Tuesday caused attendants to call for an evacuation as the flight was preparing to take off from a Spanish airport.
According to the Daily Mirror, the Ryanair flight was preparing to depart from Barcelona-El Prat Airport at around 5.30 p.m. local time en route to the party island of Ibiza when a passenger's mobile phone battery caught fire.
Flight attendants saw the fire, called for a mandatory evacuation and activated the inflatable slides. Footage captured at the Barcelona airport shows passengers rushing to get out of the plane, landing on each other and falling off the slide as they made it to the tarmac.
Several passengers reportedly suffered slight burns, but no one needed medical attention.
Videos on social media showed the phone fire and the melee as the incident unfolded:
Impacted passengers were taken to the airport's Terminal One where they waited until another plane could be prepared for the flight and the luggage could be shifted to the new aircraft.
"The passengers of a flight from Barcelona to Ibiza were evacuated in an emergency at Barcelona's El Prat Airport because of a fire in a mobile phone that was being charged with an external battery," a Ryanair Spain spokesperson said. "All the passengers were evacuated from the aircraft in a safe way to the terminal and the cabin crew took charge of the device."
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