American Airlines flight makes emergency landing due to malfunctioning e-cigarette

An American Airlines (AA) flight on Thursday afternoon made an emergency landing in the US city of Little Rock due to a malfunctioning electronic cigarette, China's Xinhua news agency reported.

The Indianapolis-bound American Airlines flight 1129, which was carrying 137 passengers and five crew members, left the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport at 12.47 pm local time, but it was forced to land in Little Rock, the capital of the state of Arkansas, because a passenger's electronic cigarette malfunctioned, the airline said in a statement.

The flight landed safely around 1.50 pm local time and no injuries were reported, a spokesman for the Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport/Adams Field said.

The airline sent a replacement aircraft later in the day to Little Rock to continue the trip to Indianapolis, the capital of the US state of Indiana.

American Airlines is a major American airline headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas. It is also the world's largest airline when measured by fleet size, revenue, and scheduled passenger-kilometers flown, and the second largest by number of destinations served. -- BERNAMA