The Transportation Department issued an emergency order Friday
afternoon, which bans the Note 7 from all air travel effective Saturday
at noon.
“We recognize that banning these phones from airlines will inconvenience
some passengers, but the safety of all those aboard an aircraft must
take priority,” Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said.
“We are taking this additional step because even one fire incident
inflight poses a high risk of severe personal injury and puts many lives
at risk.”
Note 7 devices have already seen their use limited on airlines. Since
the first reports emerged of the Note 7 bursting into flames, airlines
have begun limiting use of the Note 7 on planes.
Right now, most flights are allowing passengers to bring Note 7 devices
in their carry-on luggage, but they have to be switched off and not
charged.
Of course, this isn’t just a hypothetical danger — a SouthWest flight
was evacuated last week after a “safe” Galaxy Note 7 burst into flames,
filling the plane with smoke and forcing an evacuation. Luckily, the
plane was still on the ground and boarding at the time, so it’s
understandable why the FAA would want to ban potentially explosive
devices from flights.
Hopefully, the ban won’t prove an inconvenience to too many people. You
can easily get a refund or exchange if you bought your phone from any of
the US carriers, or through a slightly more convoluted procedure
involving a fireproof box if you bought it direct from Samsung. If you
do still have a Note 7, you should power it down immediately and
exchange it. (Here’s a handy guide.)
The Note 7 fiasco has put Samsung in dire straits. It already adjusted
down its earnings, and early estimates put the total fallout from this
incident somwhere above $10 billion. Samsung has stopped production of
the Note 7 entirely and it’s planning to simply destroy all the recalled
phones. So, not only did Samsung produce millions of Note 7s that it’s
going to have to write off, but it will never see any profit from the
years of R&D put into the Note 7. It may have to kill off the Note
brand entirely.
The company isn’t giving up yet, and Samsung mobile chief Koh Dong-jin
said on Wednesday that he “would at any cost find the exact cause (of
the faulty Galaxy Note 7) to restore trust of consumers so that they can
use Samsung products without any safety concerns.”
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