Aust'n airline bans onboard charging of faulty Samsung Galaxy Note7 phones

Australia's national airline Qantas has on Thursday banned passengers from charging their Samsung Galaxy Note7 smartphones while onboard its aircraft, after the Korean company issued a worldwide recall for faulty batteries.

Samsung issued the recall of the handsets on Sept. 2 after a number of phones reportedly burned while charging, and after an Australian man's phone "exploded" while he slept in a Perth hotel room earlier this week, Qantas made the decision to ban charging the Galaxy Note7 devices on board.

Qantas passenger Dean Cabena told local media that Qantas crew members announced the ban to passengers on a flight from Perth to Sydney this week, while a spokesperson for the national airline confirmed the charging ban on Thursday.

"Following the worldwide recall of the Samsung Galaxy Note7 Personal Electronic Device (PED), we are requesting that passengers do not charge them inflight," the Qantas spokesperson told Fairfax Media.

The recall is expected to affect more than 50,000 phones in Australia and millions worldwide, and Samsung Australia said while the issue was not considered to be an immediate threat to health, it was being "voluntary and proactive" in recalling the products.

The company said that so far, there had been just two reported instances of the Galaxy Note7 cell phones overheating in Australia and around 35 cases of burning phones reported worldwide. Endit