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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

#61

Post by asdff »

grepfru_it wrote: post #51
techsupporter wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The behavior of ultra low cost airlines is often inexcusable, but understandable, and why I don't fly them. Their employees are usually not allowed to make "good reason" exceptions because exceptions are nebulous and passengers may argue why the next time isn't a "good reason" and airlines want that money. It's like a flying cruise ship; the fare gets you a chair and nothing else because the everything else is where…

I watched someone pretend to fall asleep after getting their bottle of water. Then pretended to be asleep until they landed. They got off the plan with a free bottle of water.

What airline? Most will just bill to the card used to buy the ticket.

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

#62

Post by rektide »

chha wrote: post #42
rsync wrote: post #31

I'm surprised that after all of these years commercial airliners don't have jettison tubes/boxes/compartments ... A one-way, pressure (and possibly mechanical) airlock (or sphincter ?) that you can force a small item out of. This feature would have been useful even prior to mobile phones and batteries. It is my understanding that jet liners dump fuel anytime it is expedient to[1] so this is hardly the worst outcome i…

> I am unsure whether a jet liner can descend to a breathable altitude (say, 10000 feet) and feed "fresh", or ambient, air into the plane. That seems like a nice redundancy to have and I wonder how realistic it would be to implement ... This is already in place, and has been since planes began going high enough to require pressurized cabins. The engines basically suck in lots of air which is compressed, resulting in…

Fun fact, the f35 jet fighter has kept needing more and more bleed-air for thermal management, and it's putting more than expected wear & load on the engines.

One of the next major upgrades is the P&W Engine Core Upgrade which replaces some of the inner engine, and one of the main features is a greatly increased thermal management capability for the engine, since it has so much more bleed air demand than originally expected. I think maybe more bleed air too? This after GE's proposed XA100 got turned down, which would have been even more of a beast (albeit not fit in the Marines stol jet).

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

#63

Post by asdff »

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #9
akiselev wrote: 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.

While cellphones might have plateued, what hasn't I'd imagine are travel batteries. People get terrible ones from amazon or for free from places with a random corporate logo printed on the side. It's probably a lot of junk that's not nearly as scrutinized as a smartphone with qc. With each year more of these end up being gifted by friends and relatives as a cheap and useful gift and put into circulation.

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

#64

Post by rektide »

____jes wrote: post #36
photoGrant wrote: post #4

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.

While they’re not under every seat, battery fire containment bags are already included in airlines’ onboard emergency equipment, for flight attendants to use when needed. https://avsax.com/news/what-to-do-if-a-lithium-battery-catch...

And hopefully some tongs to move the devices into the bag while still molten.

I'm perversely curious how bad the smoke issue is when this happens on planes. Honestly fucked up, but I actually don't think the fire is really that much of an issue, is almost no real threat. You bet your ass the plane, the seats, the carpet, the bulkheads are non-flammable. There's no real threat here, from what I can tell. Other than the harm of a major smoke release. I know there's a ton of air systems on planes... It's be so interesting to see a video of an extreme battery detonation test on a plane, to see how the smoke & air systems handle it.

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

#65

Post by croutonwagon »

I did an international flight to a country that had spotty power and it was a 3+ week trip.

So naturally I grabbed my kids firetablet 5000 mah battery packs (x2), my iPhone charger, personal and work laptop, and a couple sets of AirPods.

Needless to say my backpack was heavy. One airline (Asiana) wanted to weigh my carryon and told me it was too heavy. I told them I had reservations checking lithium batteries to a non pressurized cabin. I offered to pay a fee but could t really just toss the laptops etc (the bulk of the weight).

Eventually they let it slide because of the batteries but for a second I thought I was gonna be stuck in a terminal or be forced to Chuck a MacBook or something in the trash (and let be serious, the work machine goes first)

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

#66

Post by quitit »

asdff wrote: post #63
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

While cellphones might have plateued, what hasn't I'd imagine are travel batteries. People get terrible ones from amazon or for free from places with a random corporate logo printed on the side. It's probably a lot of junk that's not nearly as scrutinized as a smartphone with qc. With each year more of these end up being gifted by friends and relatives as a cheap and useful gift and put into circulation.

Sure smartphones may have plateaued, but that doesn't mean they quality of them is stable either. Low cost foreign brands are popular because they're now good enough for many consumers.

But on your point: I have received 3 of the travel batteries you've described as promotional/corporate gifts. They're all junk, and their housing is weak. While I've never used any of them, it wouldn't be such a stretch for me to charge one up as a "back up" battery when I go travelling. (Obviously now I won't.)

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

#67

Post by doktorhladnjak »

croutonwagon wrote: post #65

I did an international flight to a country that had spotty power and it was a 3+ week trip. So naturally I grabbed my kids firetablet 5000 mah battery packs (x2), my iPhone charger, personal and work laptop, and a couple sets of AirPods. Needless to say my backpack was heavy. One airline (Asiana) wanted to weigh my carryon and told me it was too heavy. I told them I had reservations checking lithium batteries to a no…

The baggage compartments of modern jet aircraft are pressurized

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

#68

Post by doktorhladnjak »

florbo wrote: post #50
sojournerc wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In many emergencies pilots will conduct an "emergency descent" down to 10000 as part of the checklist (or memory item). It is a dive that you would never otherwise experience in a commercial jet.

I was on a flight where one of the pilots had a heart attack and got to experience weightlessness or close to it for a few seconds. Cool to think about what that felt like now but in moment.. not so much. Anyway, the pilot survived and the delay was surprisingly short given the circumstances.

I had something like this happen once too.

“Attention passengers, this is your captain speaking. I’m not feeling well. The first officer will be landing the plane as soon as possible.”

I was quite surprised how quickly they can safely and smoothly lane a plane when there’s urgency. We were at the gate with paramedics waiting within 10-15 minutes from cruise altitude, and we still had to backtrack 100 miles or so to the airport.

Overall delay was only about 2 hours which was mostly finding another pilot on short notice.

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

#69

Post by aaomidi »

asdff wrote: post #61
grepfru_it wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I watched someone pretend to fall asleep after getting their bottle of water. Then pretended to be asleep until they landed. They got off the plan with a free bottle of water.

What airline? Most will just bill to the card used to buy the ticket.

That’s not really an authorized transaction

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

#70

Post by poo-yie »

grepfru_it wrote: post #51
techsupporter wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The behavior of ultra low cost airlines is often inexcusable, but understandable, and why I don't fly them. Their employees are usually not allowed to make "good reason" exceptions because exceptions are nebulous and passengers may argue why the next time isn't a "good reason" and airlines want that money. It's like a flying cruise ship; the fare gets you a chair and nothing else because the everything else is where…

I watched someone pretend to fall asleep after getting their bottle of water. Then pretended to be asleep until they landed. They got off the plan with a free bottle of water.

Good grief! Sad when someone needs to play games for a bottle of water.
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