This is a Bit Scary: Airline's Emergency Landing

Post Reply
fountainhall

This is a Bit Scary: Airline's Emergency Landing

Post by fountainhall »

A fire aboard a Virgin Atlantic flight headed to London has forced the plane to make an emergency landing in Boston.

Massachusetts state police said that the crew extinguished the fire caused by a suspected faulty battery charger on board the A330 Airbus plane on Thursday night local time.

An external phone charger appears to have caused the fire.

Massachusetts state police bomb disposal officers examined the aircraft after it landed and found a device between the cushions of a seat which had ignited.

“Preliminary investigation suggests it is a battery pack consistent in appearance with an external phone charger,” a police spokesman said.
I have seen so many people bring battery chargers on to aircraft. On my THAI flight from Hong Kong a week ago, several people were watching movies on their phones, some using chargers. With wifi available on many flights now, phones, tablets and chargers are much more commonly seen. If one goes up in smoke mid-air. I hope I am not on that aircraft.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... e-on-board
Jun

Re: This is a Bit Scary: Airline's Emergency Landing

Post by Jun »

I was under the possibly mistaken impression that airlines had got some kind of fireproof box these days for such things. However, google didn't provide any suitable answers on that.
There is a reference to procuring fireproof bags.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/airlin ... -1.3804679

I don't think banning phones and laptops from planes is practical in the 21st century. For a start, in this day & age, if the laptop were banned, a lot of the business trips would be converted to conference calls. Fewer business trips is great for the environment, but I don't see the airlines being too happy about that. Then we have the phone addicts, who would either be near suicidal or staying at home if their phone were not allowed to accompany them.

I would probably be inclined to equip every plane with at least one fireproof & airtight box that could take the largest laptops. Then train cabin crew to deal with fires on portable electrical equipment. Then to do the job properly, specify a maximum size for a laptop or other battery powered item that can be taken on board.
fountainhall

Re: This is a Bit Scary: Airline's Emergency Landing

Post by fountainhall »

I think the issue with the Virgin plane was not specifically about laptops or phones. It is more about the small pre-charged units that one is permitted to take on board. Some aircraft are fitted with a charge outlet at the beck of seats. I am sure this will become more common as airlines refit their fleets and introduce new aircraft. For the present, though, anyone on a long flight may well find their laptop/phone batteries will not last the full length of a flight. And I wonder how many of us actually make sure each is fully charged before we go to the airport. So for the time being these small portable chargers will be used. I have two of them. Each does get quite warm when charging but still easy to handle. Certainly not anywhere close to being hot enough to burn a cushion. But these things are often given away, Both of mine were freebies. Starbucks in Thailand gave one free as a New Year gift to their Gold Card members. I can imagine that not all freebies are made to very high standards. Perhaps some get much hotter. Perhaps greater regulation re their manufacture is required.

You cannot put a fireproof box on every seat. (Perhaps you are thinking of the Dreamliner where the large lithium ion batteries self combusted in some of the earlier models and Boeing developed a number of preventabie measures, including a more fireproof box). In this case, the crew seemed to do their job and quickly extinguished the fire. But having to make an emergency landing is very costly for an airline and very disturbing for passengers.
Jun

Re: This is a Bit Scary: Airline's Emergency Landing

Post by Jun »

There are some shoddy chargers around. I once found a website which had performance measurements & teardowns of some of them & the results were not good.
I would not be buying a charger in Tuk Com, since they are often selling the kind of rubbish that was in these teardowns.

For travel I have 2 chargers. One is a Panasonic model, purchased in Japan. 100~230V input. It's compact and very light, with 2 flat pins and produces 2 amps whilst running cool. Presumably due to a fancy high frequency switching circuit. The other was bought in one of the large Thai electrical stores. Nice external shape, but it runs considerably warmer than the Panasonic and is more prone to bringing up a slow charging warning on my Samsung tablet. Also heavier.
Go to Amazon to buy a travel charger & you are confronted with a long list of unknown brands. Buying quality is surprisingly difficult.

As for the aircraft, a portable fireproof box would be all that's needed. Equip the crew with fire resistant gloves and anything on fire can be placed in it. They could even inject CO2 into it. Emergency landings are not the solution, as what do you do if you're flying over the Pacific ?
Post Reply