It isn’t rocket science but it seems some people are still having trouble grasping the simple instruction to call a flight attendant if they lose their phone in their seat.

A business class passenger on a Qantas Airbus A380 flight from Los Angeles to Melbourne has become the latest to ignore the instruction and cause a furor by crushing their mobile phone moving the seat in an attempt to retrieve it.

SEE our video “Dispelling the myths about flying”.

The aircraft was about two hours out of Melbourne Wednesday when the smell of burnt rubber reportedly wafted through the cabin and flight crew were seen heading to the business cabin with fire extinguishers.

The cabin crew contained the smoking phone and the pilot decided to continue to Melbourne after a conversation with the airline’s operations center.

“Our crew are trained to handle these situations and the crew onboard followed all the correct procedures,’’ a spokesman said.  “This incident shows why we ask passengers to seek help from our cabin crew in retrieving their mobile phones.”

READ Passengers continue to ignore device fire danger

Not following the correct procedures or the advice given on every flight during the safety video can be dangerous.

Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority estimates the average Australian passengers travel with three to four personal electronic devices on their person with another one to two packed in checked baggage.

“While rare, there have been incidents of malfunctioning/damaged lithium batteries in recent years with the most common cause being smartphones and their batteries being crushed in passengers’ seats,’’ CASA said.

Crushing a phone is not the only reason a  battery might ignite: others include electrical shorting, rapid discharge, overcharging, a manufacturing defect, poor design or by simply being dropped.

The more severe cases can result in a “thermal runaway”,  a reaction within the battery causing internal temperatures and pressure to rise at a quicker rate than can be dissipated.

“Once one cell within a battery goes into thermal runaway it can produce enough heat to cause adjacent cells to sympathetically react,’’ CASA warns. “ This can produce  smoke, fire and fumes that can repeatedly flare up as each battery cell in turn ruptures and releases its contents.”

One of Australia’s first reportable lithium battery events occurred in November 2011 when a Regional Express passenger’s iPhone started emitting smoke as ta Lismore-Sydney flight landed.

The overheating was traced to a loose screw from an unapproved screen repair causing a short circuit.

Perhaps the most widespread impact of lithium battery fires came when manufacturer Samsung was forced to discontinue the Galaxy Note 7  in 2016 after it was banned by airlines globally for safety reasons.

CASA tells airlines to educate passengers on how to use and stow their devices and not to use mechanical or electrical seat functions when a device is lost in a chair.

The head of the US National Transportation Safety Board has slammed the way flight operations information is presented to pilots as “garbage”  at a public hearing into a near catastrophe involving an Air Canada flight landing at San Francisco.

The  Air Canada A320  carrying 140 passengers and crew from Toronto  was cleared to land on San Francisco International Airport ’s runway 28R on July, 2017.

The experienced flight crew instead lined up on a crowded parallel taxiway due to what investigators determined was a lack of awareness.

Four aircraft — an  Airbus A340, two Boeing 787s and a Boeing 737 — were on the taxiway awaiting takeoff clearance on July 7, 2017, when the pilots mistook if for the runway.

After flying over the first aircraft on the taxiway at 100ft above ground level  the plane dropped as low as 59 feet  — barely above the 56ft height of a Boeing 787 tail — before it began to gain height.

The aircraft performed a go-around and returned to land safely but experts said it could have been one of the worst catastrophes in aviation history.

The NTSB found the crew was unaware a parallel runway had been closed due to their “ineffective review of notice to airmen (NOTAM) before the flight and during the approach briefing”.

Contributing to this was the flight crew’s failure to tune to the instrument landing system (ILS)  for backup lateral guidance as well as their firm belief they were on the right course, fatigue and breakdowns in crew resource management.

Also contributing was  “Air Canada’s ineffective presentation of approach procedure and NOTAM information”.

READ our ratings  for Air Canada

“Although the notice to airmen about the runway 28L closure appeared in the flight release and the aircraft communication addressing and reporting system message that were provided to the flight crew, the presentation of the information did not effectively convey the importance of the runway closure information and promote flight crew review and retention,’’ the NTSB said.

The NTSB called more effective presentation of flight operations information to encourage pilots to review it and remember what it said.

NTSB board members complained at the hearing that NOTAMs were an archaic system full of useless information that hid important details.

“(NOTAMs) are written in a language only a computer programmer can understand,” US media quoted NTSB chairman Robert L. Sumwalt as saying. “NOTAMs are just a bunch of garbage.”

Sumwalt said the mistakes identified in the report highlighted the need for a further review of approach and landing procedures.

“This event could very easily have had a catastrophic outcome,’’ he said. “The recommendations issued as a result of this investigation, if implemented, will help prevent the possibility of a similar incident from occurring in the future.”

Other recommendations issued to the US  Federal Aviation Administration and Transport Canada addressed issues such as the need for aircraft landing at primary airports within class B and class C airspace to be equipped with a system that alerts pilots when an airplane is not aligned with a runway surface.

The NTSB also called for a method to more effectively signal a runway closure to pilots when at least one parallel runway remains in use, and modifications to airport surface detection equipment systems to detect potential taxiway landings and provide alerts to air traffic controllers.

The FAA, which says it is looking at simplifying NOTAMs, modified night time landing procedures at San Francisco as a result of the incident.

Air New Zealand’s first A321neo will enter low-cost carrier territory with some seats offering a Hobbit-sized 29-inch (73cm) pitch when it enters the fleet in mid-November.

The Kiwi carrier has ordered 13 Airbus neo aircraft — seven A321neos and six A320neos — to replace its existing fleet of A320s and another seven A321neos are on order for anticipated domestic growth.

The planes have a combined list price of $NZ2.8 billion and the new technology A321neos will help deliver fuel savings and efficiencies of at least 15 percent compared to the planes they replace.

The international A320neos will have 165 seats on board compared to the 168 on the current international aircraft, which feature a seat pitch of 30 to 34 inches. Seat pitch is the distance between a point on a seat to the same point on the seat in front.

The A321s will have 214 seats with a seat pitch ranging from 29 inches to 33 (83cm) inches.

But the airline says the slimline design and curved design of the A321neo seats means passengers “sink further into the seat back creating up to 7 percent more usable space when compared with the equivalent pitch on the existing fleet”.

The middle seat will also be 3cms wider and the aisle and window seats 1cm wider. This will boost the aisle and window seats to the Airbus standard of 18 inches from the narrow 17-inch seats on the existing A320s.

Other enhancements in the cabin include 25 percent more overhead locker space, a new Android-based inflight entertainment system with a 10-inch screen, high power USB charging points and Wi-Fi connectivity.

The tight seats kick in from row 18 rearwards on the left side of the cabin as you face towards the nose, although there are exit row seats and a couple of rows of seats with a pitch of just under 30 inches (76cm).

Most of the seats along the starboard side are 30 inches or above but, again, there are a couple of rows of 29-inch seats.

The more spacious 32-inch (81cms) and 33-inch (83cm) seats are at the front of the plane  (Note: The conversion to seat pitches in inches is rounded up to the nearest inch.).

The 29-inch seat pitch means the Kiwi carrier has gone where even some major US carriers have vowed not to go and into seat pitch territory normally occupied by low-cost carriers.

READ: US seat legislation may not mean more legroom.

But Air New Zealand Chief Executive Officer Christopher Luxon said the airline had extensively tested the neo inflight experience with customers to ensure it could incorporate their feedback “while meeting regulatory and operating requirements’’.

This had left it confident it would deliver an inflight experience passengers would enjoy.

“Australia and the Pacific Islands are a vitally important part of our Pacific Rim network,’’ he said.

“We operate up to 240 services each week with our Airbus narrow-body aircraft.

“These new aircraft are key to enabling us to grow our short-haul network while offering our customers a great inflight experience.’’

A second A321neo is also expected to enter service in November and the airline’s first A320neo is scheduled for February, 2019.

The remaining aircraft will follow at intervals until late 2019, while the additional A321neos for the airline’s domestic network are expected to be delivered from 2020 to 2024.

US legislation requiring the Federal Aviation Administration to draw up regulations covering minimum airline seat dimensions has been given a bipartisan tick but passengers shouldn’t hold their breath waiting for a more comfortable ride.

The House and the Senate reached consensus on a 1200-page bipartisan bill to reauthorize Federal Aviation Administration funding for five years over the weekend and one of the provisions requires the FAA to set minimum legroom and width limits for airline seating.

The FAA will then have a year to develop regulations on minimum standards for economy seating, including seat pitch (the space between a seat and the seat in front of it), width and length.

But the legislation does not specify what this should be other than to say they would be minimum dimensions “that are necessary for the safety and health of passengers”.

Nor does it give any indication how the rules would relate to cramped seating already in place.

There is some speculation The FAA  could establish a floor for seat pitch as low as 28  inches and a minimum width of 16.5 inches, dimensions that would still be cramped for most people.

This FAA was forced to visit the issue after a federal court judge ordered concerns about what she described as “the incredibly shrinking airline seat’” during a case brought by consumer group Flyers Rights.

Flyers Rights had argued that narrower seats and closer seat spacing were “endangering the safety, health and comfort of airline passengers.”.

But in its response, the FAA indicated it did not have a problem with seat pitches as low as 27 inches, although it doubted airlines could sell a configuration that tight.

The lowest seat pitch currently is about 28 inches but many legacy carriers offer 31 to 32 inches.

The US regulator told Flyers Rights in a letter that it had no evidence of an immediate safety issue requiring a change to existing rules.

It said that nothing in letters or submissions provided by the consumer organization “demonstrated that current seat dimensions (width and pitch) hamper the speed of passenger evacuation, or that increasing passenger size creates an evacuation issue.”

Airline chiefs are opposed to outside interference in how they configure their cabins and say people who want more space can buy it.

READ: Economy class crunch, airline chiefs warn against legroom regulations.

However, the bosses of two major carriers, American and Delta, pledged recently not to make seating any tighter than it already was.

Some other changes in the FAA Bill may have more impact on passengers.

It prohibits passengers from being involuntarily removed from flights once they’ve passed the gate. This provision was put forward in response to the infamous incident where a  doctor was dragged screaming from a United flight in Chicago.

Airlines will also still have to advertise the entire price of a ticket, including taxes and charges, and regulators will now be able to determine whether airlines are fibbing when they tell passengers that flights have been delayed or canceled because of weather.

But successful lobbying by airlines means a proposal limiting baggage and reservation change fees was dropped, although carriers must now refund passengers for services for which they paid but did not receive.

Other changes cover the potential return of supersonic flights by allowing reduced sonic booms over land and the ability of passengers traveling with small children to check strollers.

One of the more bizarre provisions makes it against the law to place a live animal in an overhead storage compartment.

This was prompted by anger over the death in March of a 10-month-old French Bulldog after a flight attendant required it to be placed in an overhead bin.