My friend, Inderpal Mumick, CEO of Kirusa, the company behind Instavoice, shared a scary incident that happened to him at the Murtala Muhammed International airport on his way out of Nigeria to the US last week.
It was a case of a smoking MacBook. The MacBook was a MacBook Pro Retina Display 13.3″ (2015), Model# A1502.
According to him;
Inderpal Mumick
“On April 11, 2017, at approximately 7.00 pm I walked into the Lagos airport, after X-Raying my handbags, looking for the check-in counters for Delta Airlines, when several people started pointing to my laptop bag and shouting.”
“I looked down and was bewildered to see smoke coming out of my rollaway laptop bag. I panicked, and as I turned the bag upside down, my smoking hot MacBook Pro came out on the floor. All this took a few seconds before I saw and heard a security officer dashing to my bag, and asking me to step back, and step back more, and stand still, as more officers got to the scene.”
“The security officer, whom I later found out was a bomb squad expert, Francis, emptied and went through every item in my bags. Once satisfied there was nothing of concern, he allowed me to put the things back.”
“He then focused on the MacBook, which was still scalding hot, with some of the keys melting and coming off, and showing signs of black smoke. The vented back cover had melted from the heat.”
Of course after this incident, he was questioned by the bomb squad officers, airport security and state security personnel. They wanted to know about him, his visit to Nigeria, his laptop and what he did to get the laptop smoking.
The security officers took the MacBook, his phone and his Passport for further scrutiny.
According to him, “I have owned the MacBook for almost two years, and used it that afternoon, like any other day, in my company’s office in Lagos, before traveling to the Lagos airport for the flight back home.”
After he introduced himself as the CEO of Kirusa and the fact that Kirusa provides the InstaVoice App and services that are offered by the Nigerian mobile operators including MTN, Airtel, and Etisalat, this helped his case as some of the officers had heard about Instavoice.
After the interrogation and inspection of the smoking MacBook, satisfied with his explanations, and with whatever research they did behind the scenes on my background, he was escorted to the Delta check-in counter so that he could check in before the counter closed.
He adds, “It was a harrowing and scary incident, yet I must admire the courteousness and professionalism of the Nigerian security teams, and especially the bomb squad officer and the head of the bomb squad. In hindsight, how they reacted, resolved, and conducted themselves is the reason I suffered no harm. Thank you, Francis.”
“It was sheer providence that the incident happened at the airport, and not a few hours later in the plane where it could have had disastrous consequences. ”
“What is flabbergasting is when I reached home in NJ and reported the incident to Apple’s customer care team their response was perfunctory and alarming. While saying they take safety very seriously, they refused to do anything until I get the laptop in my hands in USA, even after being told that the airport security ordered that the laptop cannot be taken on an airplane. Reached over Twitter, @applesupport referred to the prior response of their customer care team. Given that Apple takes product safety seriously, I would expect they would investigate the product in Nigeria, without risking putting a defective product on a plane again.”
Francis is a ‘hands-on’ Executive with experience in the profitable launch, sales, marketing and rollout of new products and services, and Project Management. He is the Principal consultant of Tenth Code Media. He has extensive experience in Technology, Media, Telecoms, Digital Financial Services industries
