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Rising number of lithium battery incidents on airplanes worry crew

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Re: Rising number of lithium battery incidents on airplanes worry crew

#11

I've wondered how long it will take for them to put an emergency fireproof bag behind/under every seat. Surely it's worth the expense. Maybe they'll do something when it one day costs more in bad PR.

> Surely it's worth the expense.

you'd think the same about parachutes for everyone which could have rescued lives on some of the plane disasters.

Re: Rising number of lithium battery incidents on airplanes worry crew

#12
If a huge fire breaks out on a plain mid flight, you realistically have no chance of survival right? So instead of trying to survive only to get burned to death you should inhale as much fumes as possible to pass out and die quickly before you are burned?

Re: Rising number of lithium battery incidents on airplanes worry crew

#13
We've come full circle as a society. Pressurized steam used to power everything, created by burning coal and wood. Then we went to oil based fuels for transportation and grid electricity and natural gas for most other energy needs. Now we are back to pressurized battery electricity created by coal, gas, hydro.

Thermal runaway issues will increase as more lithium devices malfunction and age, as the endless electric scooter and other battery fires demonstrate.

https://youtu.be/4IrN9MTj5YI The 1948 Steam Locomotive Boiler Explosion Outside of Chillicothe, Ohio

Re: Rising number of lithium battery incidents on airplanes worry crew

#14
post #6

Sounds disturbing, but when I think about the thousands of flights, 100000s of passengers, almost all with at least 1 LiIon device…a lot more incidents should have happened at this point. Semi-related story: I started a flight from a not-1st world country to another not-1st in the times when all cell phones had to be switched off. When we approached landing, the cellphones got contact and started buzzing and ringing…

I don't want this discussion to devolve into an FAA radio interference flame war but the risk from general consumer electronic/mobile devices on airplanes has been minimal and most instruments are well shielded against RF interference.

I would suspect most seasoned and knowledgeable pilots don't worry too much about Mr Businessman in first class on his iPhone or Tablet using 5G.

On the other hand I have seen more than one flight attendant absolutely lose their marbles because someone was texting during announcements or while taxiing.

Aside from the fact that someone talking on their phone during a flight would be terribly annoying, the biggest issue with active phones on airplanes was how it messed with ground cell towers. There was fair amount of handoff the towers had to do with traveling passengers at 30,000 feet. At least in the earlier days it was problematic to deal with. I'd love a wireless communications engineer to chime in on that part.

Re: Rising number of lithium battery incidents on airplanes worry crew

#15
post #12

If a huge fire breaks out on a plain mid flight, you realistically have no chance of survival right? So instead of trying to survive only to get burned to death you should inhale as much fumes as possible to pass out and die quickly before you are burned?

It seems somewhat tragic to me that you believe “inhaling as much fumes as possible” would even be an option. Human psychology doesn’t really work like that.

Re: Rising number of lithium battery incidents on airplanes worry crew

#16
post #6

Sounds disturbing, but when I think about the thousands of flights, 100000s of passengers, almost all with at least 1 LiIon device…a lot more incidents should have happened at this point. Semi-related story: I started a flight from a not-1st world country to another not-1st in the times when all cell phones had to be switched off. When we approached landing, the cellphones got contact and started buzzing and ringing…

What is your proposition here? That these incidents aren't actually occurring as reported, or that in air fires just aren't a big deal? Eventually such a fire will end in a disaster, we're really just playing with probability. In aviation a lot of investment is made in mitigating much less likely problems, but we seem to be happy to accept the proliferation of potentially dangerous devices I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but it is interesting.

Re: Rising number of lithium battery incidents on airplanes worry crew

#17
Some folks in front of me had a mifi hotspot light on fire at the airport while in line to board. I saw the smoke and thought they were trying to get one last vape in, and told them it was bold of them. They said they didn't vape, after which I said their backpack was smoking. Gate lady made them throw it in the (blastproof, I guess) trash can. They eventually got to board but had to toss the backpack.

That said they got to keep the contents. They sat across from us where we got to breathe in residual lithium smoke the whole flight, and allegiant still wanted to charge us for water.

Re: Rising number of lithium battery incidents on airplanes worry crew

#18
post #6

Sounds disturbing, but when I think about the thousands of flights, 100000s of passengers, almost all with at least 1 LiIon device…a lot more incidents should have happened at this point. Semi-related story: I started a flight from a not-1st world country to another not-1st in the times when all cell phones had to be switched off. When we approached landing, the cellphones got contact and started buzzing and ringing…

"I get what you're saying about seat belts. But when I think about all the hours I've driven, the thousands upon thousands of miles ... something should have happened by this point."

If cell phones posed a danger to flight safety, somewhere a plane should have crashed already. Similar to here.

The logic here seems to be: "Factor X turned out to be a false alarm. Therefore this new factor Y you're talking about -- completely unrelated to X -- well, it's probably a false alarm as well."

Re: Rising number of lithium battery incidents on airplanes worry crew

#19
post #10
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People want to use them during the flight. A storage container wouldn't get used.

You can dump the burning phone into them. The gasses are probably worse than the initial fire.

A burning battery spewing out gases is going to quickly pressurize any sort of bag, isn't it?

Re: Rising number of lithium battery incidents on airplanes worry crew

#20
post #7

> A CBS News Investigation has discovered similar incidents have been happening much more frequently in the skies over the United States. The FAA verifies the number of lithium-Ion battery fires jumped more 42% [sic] in the last five years. I just checked several estimates of iPhone/iPad sales and number of Android users using a cursory Google search. Guess what? The increase in the number of fires correlates with gr…

> Guess what? The increase in the number of fires correlates with growth in the number of electronic devices sold. That would be odd. Surely a huge number of the devices sold replace prior devices. More interesting would be the number of phones on planes and I would assume that this is mostly flat at this point.

Presumably, the base sales would be for replacement. You don't need increasing sales to handle replacement rate. I'd expect ~40% more device sales roughly means 40% more devices on planes, which means ~40% more device incidents on planes.

Though, that's not to say it's not worrying, just that it's not exactly a surprising increase.

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