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Virgin and Qantas to ban use of portable power banks after string of fires

abc.net.au

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Re: Virgin and Qantas to ban use of portable power banks after string of fires

#41

Post by btown »

wlesieutre wrote: post #40
jballer wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to look up the maximum wattage for the given cabin configuration. I’ve found 30W to be about as high as I can go without it cutting out. Use a phone charger for your laptop. This is where it’s helpful to have a multi-port charger where they’re not all high-draw. IMO more important to go with something flat or light that won’t fall out under its own weight.

Assuming this is USB-C ports, they're supposed to negotiate a supported power limit with the device you plug in. If the port is saying "I can deliver 60W" and then cutting out if you draw more than 30, there's something wrong with their chargers.

There is something wrong with their chargers.

Re: Virgin and Qantas to ban use of portable power banks after string of fires

#42

Post by YokoZar »

poemxo wrote: post #4
JumpinJack_Cash wrote: post #3

Meanwhile you can carry a nuclear bomb on a train and nobody even bothers to check the id or ticket up until you are on board. Irrational fear of flight strikes again, it's a very long list actually of standards that aviation has to comply with in order not to thrive but to merely exist , all because people are irrationally fearful about being suspended mid air. It's the same thing for nuclear

Most people don't have nuclear bombs.

Citation needed

Re: Virgin and Qantas to ban use of portable power banks after string of fires

#43

Post by zamadatix »

appreciatorBus wrote: post #32
zamadatix wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with the concept of comparing risk being the meaningful approach, but I disagree this is how you go about measuring risk. How many people are being injured/killed per million km or something is the type of metric. Air travel far exceeds those types of metrics vs other common modes of travel, yet is always the first one to be further focused on how bad it could potentially be.

I would argue at the performance of aviation safety, and the constant focus on how bad it could be, is exactly why aviation is safe. The day that we decide to stop focussing on what could go wrong, is the day that aviation stops being safe. For example, if aircraft come within five nautical miles or I think it’s 1000 vertical feet, it’s considered a very serious incident. Not because anyone is in danger at five nauti…

Naturally it's why it's so much safer, but the options for air travel safety most certainly aren't uniquely only between "as safe as possible" or "not safe at all". It should be no different than how we weigh safety regulation for any other mode of travel, and this kind of "either we do everything possible or we won't have safety" instead of focusing purely on what the measured target should be and how we currently measure against it is precisely the irrationality around it.

Re: Virgin and Qantas to ban use of portable power banks after string of fires

#44

Post by cameldrv »

JumpinJack_Cash wrote: post #3

Meanwhile you can carry a nuclear bomb on a train and nobody even bothers to check the id or ticket up until you are on board. Irrational fear of flight strikes again, it's a very long list actually of standards that aviation has to comply with in order not to thrive but to merely exist , all because people are irrationally fearful about being suspended mid air. It's the same thing for nuclear

Did you see in the article that picture of the Air Busan plane from last year? The one without the roof? That incident happened on the ground as they were getting ready for takeoff. If that were the middle of the ocean, those people would all be dead.

Re: Virgin and Qantas to ban use of portable power banks after string of fires

#46

Post by rahimnathwani »

wlesieutre wrote: post #40
jballer wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to look up the maximum wattage for the given cabin configuration. I’ve found 30W to be about as high as I can go without it cutting out. Use a phone charger for your laptop. This is where it’s helpful to have a multi-port charger where they’re not all high-draw. IMO more important to go with something flat or light that won’t fall out under its own weight.

Assuming this is USB-C ports, they're supposed to negotiate a supported power limit with the device you plug in. If the port is saying "I can deliver 60W" and then cutting out if you draw more than 30, there's something wrong with their chargers.

I'm assuming he's talking about the mains socket.

Re: Virgin and Qantas to ban use of portable power banks after string of fires

#47

Post by abenga »

JumpinJack_Cash wrote: post #19
Krssst wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uncontrolled fire in a plane is almost certain death if you don't land within minutes. You cannot land once the fire takes out the cables necessary for flight controls. Airplanes can still operate until landing after various mistreatments but uncontrolled fire is not one of them.

What are the odds that a lithium battery would cause uncontrolled fire? We are around them daily, ever since the 80s-90s , to this day I have never seen one in person. Look at this guy, he puts a screwdriver through phones for show off on youtube, intentionally damaging the battry...nothing dangerous or uncontrolled happens, the little smoke is the equivalent of a couple of cigarettes. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/…

Aviation rules are written in blood. Everything you snidely dismiss actually happened and people died/came close to dying, so the rule was added.

Re: Virgin and Qantas to ban use of portable power banks after string of fires

#48

Post by abenga »

Wistar wrote: post #34
ash_091 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A train can go from "cruising speed" to letting passengers off to escape a fire in about a minute. A plane might take anywhere from five minutes to several hours to be able to safely let passengers out. Personally I feel that's a good enough reason to impose more robust restrictions on Things Which May Cause Fire on planes compared to trains. Especially in the case of lithium batteries where they're more or less impo…

I have, for a while now, wondered when an airborne battery incident will be calamitous enough for a complete ban on power banks.

There was one accident, but it was a pallet of batteries on a cargo plane that killed the crew.

Re: Virgin and Qantas to ban use of portable power banks after string of fires

#49

Post by stubish »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #7

>five in-flight fires involving power banks on Australian or Australian-registered aircraft since 2016. So about one every two years. Better ban everything with a battery before this gets out of control.../s

Maybe the airlines would change their mind if you offered to indemnify them.

Re: Virgin and Qantas to ban use of portable power banks after string of fires

#50

Post by burnt-resistor »

aetherspawn wrote: post #37

The issue is that these power banks are often cheapo corporate gifts or bought out of vending machines, catering to the cheapest possible price and not certified to anything. In this case they have crappy BMS that doesn’t have thermal sensors or even make sure the cells are balanced during charging, and no mechanical integrity so the cell can just get crushed and explode. The solution is to require all consumer elect…

Yep. UL & CE certification to standard X. The lack of retail marketplace and manufacturing regulation enforcement are the problems that are fixable similar to lack of safety standards in automobiles in the US prior to 1966. Safety regs are written in blood and so people can winge and whine all they want about headaches, cost, red tape, and paperwork but too bad.
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