“I was in shock,” Jimmy Levy tells Inside Edition.
Former “American Idol” contestant Jimmy Levy’s backpack caught on fire on a plane.
The incident happened on a JetBlue flight from New York to Florida just before takeoff. Flight attendants poured bottles of water on the backpack after it exploded in a “ball of fire.”
“I was in shock,” Levy says.
JetBlue tells Inside Edition, “Our crew immediately responded and addressed the situation.” They blame “a customer’s malfunctioning electronic device or battery” for the fire.
Meanwhile, one passenger on another airline became outraged after she said the passenger behind her objected to her reclining her seat. “I’m allowed to put my seat back,” the woman said in a video of the argument caught on camera.
Should we ask the person behind us for permission to put our seats back? Etiquette expert and former flight attendant Elaine Swann spoke with Inside Edition.
“You do not have to ask,” Swann says. “It’s a courtesy to just take a quick look but you do not have to ask.”
Fortunately for people flying from the United States to Europe, planes are arriving ahead of schedule. Thanks to strong jet streams above the Atlantic, planes heading east are traveling 150 miles per hour faster than they normally do.
Flights from New York to London have been arriving as much as an hour early.
“This time of year the jet stream usually migrates a little south and that’s why flights, these trans-Atlantic flights can pick it up and then they just ride along it. It just pushes them. It can juice their speeds by 100, maybe 150 miles an hour,” WCBS New York meteorologist John Elliot says. “Coming back remember you’re fighting it, so the flights will actually go way to the north to avoid the jet stream.”
