I feel like I'm having some sort of Mandela Effect moment, but maybe I'm missing something a lot more obvious?
I've had portable charging battery packs for at least a decade. I wasn't special. They were common. But it's only in the last few years that I've been hearing any concern about the batteries in consumer electronic devices causing aircraft fires.
I remember hearing about the ones in hoverboards, and then there was one version of a Samsung device that had problems, but nobody generalized to "all such electronic items must be in the cabin with you, and if you lose track of yours, we're turning the plane around."
Did something maybe change about battery chemistry that I don't know about? Or did the design change, such that the batteries aren't protected anymore or have enough more capacity that they've become dangerous?
I can't imagine there were actually widespread battery fires for as long as I remember never having heard not to put a battery in checked luggage, so what else changed such that this is such a major issue now when it wasn't before?
Devices are smaller and portable batteries are treated roughly. Also, many devices have batteries with custom-ish shapes that may be better or worse than standardized designs that were popular before devices get thinner.
The other thing is that consumers won’t be aware of risks for semi-disposable batteries. I found out a few days ago that a high capacity Anker battery that I own was recalled last year. Would such a thing even happen for a random battery sold at CVS?
I was in a leadership role for an org with about 95k laptops. We had, on average 4-6 significant battery incidents with an ignition per year. Anywhere from 30-250 reported battery swelling events annually. It’s enough that we provided kits for safe storage of at risk batteries to every field office.
Now that’s a pretty low risk of an incident, but in an airline environment the impact of that risk is very high.
I'm almost surprised that you had that few battery swelling incidents although I assume that in a corporate setting laptops tend to get refreshed before you're likely to have swollen batteries. I've had one myself in an Apple MacBook Pro but it was a pretty old model when that happened. (Also an older iPhone that was driving my stereo system when I went to replace it after doing an upgrade.)
I suspect there’s more swelling that we don’t hear about. Environment matters though. Phones and tablets with wide operating ranges (Samsung was rated for like 0-120 F) have higher failure rates outdoors than iPhones… but if you try to use iPhones in a hot parking lot in the summer or keep them in an outer pocket in the winter, they’ll shut down. (The device doesn’t break, but it fails for the user)
For laptops the target was 4 year replacement for most and 2 year for high performance. IIRC, there was a Dell model where the swelling and battery shape was such that the device was super wobbly and damaged that spiked the numbers. Most devices would just get tagged as a bad battery and repaired or replaced.
If I was still there or in that role, I’d collect more battery data in general, as it’s both an employee safety and perhaps a quantitative difference that can be leveraged in purchasing.
> more swelling that we don’t hear about.
I guarantee there is. Device quits working, user doesn't know why, they discard it.
My only swelling incident so far was on a makeup mirror my wife owns. The battery is in a compartment whose door popped off due to the swelling. She asked me only when she couldn't get it to latch again. I looked at it and immediately told her not to plug it in.
Despite the fact that this thing cost hundreds of dollars, and they do sell some spare parts, the battery isn't one - and the battery leads are soldered directly to the circuit board. After some hunting around for a compatible battery (size was a major restriction), I bought it (~$15), cut the connector off, and soldered it to the board.
I tried emailing customer service; never got a reply.
>it’s both an employee safety
Yeah, you know if a work laptop catches fire in someone's house, especially if there's appreciable damage much less worse, there's not only your concern for your employee's well-being but serious lawyers are going to get involved and your company is probably going to write a pretty large check to make it all go away.
Not lithium battery related but I recently had a built-in microwave control panel (apparently) decide to self-immolate at 4am. The fire department responded and I'm fine and the direct fire damage is relatively limited but smoke throughout house. The interior is emptied out, the interior is being redone to a significant degree, and this will be basically months of work and lots of money even given insurance. Wouldn't do wonders for my productivity over the rest of the year if I were still working full-time either.
Living out of hotel. Can't imagine the situation with young children and someone who can't write large checks even if they're partially reimbursed.
Was it a General Electric microwave? I had two that tried to burn my house down. I didnt know the first one was the same company.
What I did is not buy another microwave.
Samsung. About 15 years old but still shouldn't happen. "Funnily" enough as I vaguely recall, the competition was GE.
I'm getting countertop Panasonic 4-in-1. I'm getting rid of double ovens (the second of which I basically never used) in favor of a range, which will be induction in place than my prior propane cooktop.
i'm jealous. Hope your kitchen setup brings you much joy.
These numbers are sobering - thank you for providing. Even a single battery ignition incident can burn my house.
Most people get off with it, but after I found an old iPhone with a badly swollen battery (and put it in my fireplace; this was during the summer until I could properly dispose of it), I became much more cautious about keeping old laptops and the like hanging around the house for old time's sake.
I know I have some truly ancient stuff up in the attic for basically nostalgia and I should just recycle.
> never having heard not to put a battery in checked luggage
Maybe not conventional batteries, but you've been disallowed from putting lithium batteries in checked luggage for at least 16 years. I remember being dragged into the bowels of an airport by security to open my checked bag because I'd forgotten a device in it. That was in 2009.
When you check in bags they ask you to make sure there aren't any rechargeable devices or battery packs in them and this has also been going on for a long time.
> “you've been disallowed from putting lithium batteries in checked luggage for at least 16 years.”
This rule only applies to loose (spare) Li-ion batteries, not batteries which are installed in a device.
Batteries over 160 Wh (in some cases, 100 Wh) are banned whether they’re in a device or not, but that’s far bigger than any phone battery: an iPhone 16 Pro Max battery is about 16 Wh, and typical laptop batteries are around 60 Wh.
This rule only applies to loose (spare) Li-ion batteries, not batteries which are installed in a device.
I've heard of people ordering 18650s online and getting them along with a free flashlight in which they came; I wonder if this regulation is why.
Almost definitely for import tax/restriction reasons. Putting the battery inside a cheap flashlight places it in a separate category than a battery by itself. Felt on the bottom of Converse sneakers to classify as slippers is a classic example of this.
The battery limit described is for individual passengers, not air freight.
Air freight for Li-ion batteries is pretty strictly regulated too, especially when the freight is carried on passenger aircraft.
Yup, any time I order anything from Amazon that has lithium it comes with a big warning sticker about shipping restrictions. Even if it's a fixed battery inside a device.
See UPS Flight 6 for a very good reason about why the flight of lithium batteries is regulated
I watched both Mentour Pilot and Green Dot Aviation's videos about it. Mentour Pilot's video terrified me, as it simulated the audio of being inside the cockpit, with GPWS, fire warnings, the sound of the fire all going on at the same time
Indeed. If it’s sold as already in a device, it doesn’t need the battery sticker and in general the regulations around shipping it are significantly less onerous.
Interesting, at the airport I always see general "no (devices with) batteries in checked luggage" signs.
One time I had an old phone with battery removed in checked luggage and when I arrived at my destination, I saw they fiddled with the tsa lock and the phone was taken out of the envelope I had it in and just lying on top of my clothes. I mean maybe they saw it in an xray and wanted to steal it and then saw it was some old junk phone, no idea how good the xrays come out to tell beforehand whether you're dealing with an iPhone or 7 year old android midrange...
Notably the 16” MacBook Pro (every model since 2019) goes right up to the 100 Wh limit.
For comparison, 100 Wh is 360,000 joules, which is just under either the energy released by explosion of 100 grams of TNT, or the kinetic energy of a small car at highway speeds, or the kinetic energy of 1 gram meteor hitting Earth.[1] (Sorry, I've never been a fan of the "Wh" unit and so wanted to put that total energy into layman terms.)
EDIT: doh, just realised you were comparing with other forms of damage. That said, I think its truly amazing that a snack has the same energy as a nasty car crash. Mind blown.
To me it is hard to visualize how much damage the total energy gained from digesting chemical bonds of food could do to an airplane. I can better visualize the damage that could be done by a highway car crash or detonating a handful of TNT in an airplane.
These counterfactual comparisons are a slippery slope and not as helpful as you think. I hardly think that you, I, or most others have an intuitive understanding for what happens when a 1 gram meteor hits earth. Have you ever witnessed that?
The average failure state of a battery is not similar to detonating a handful of TNT on an airplane, which is a more instantaneous explosion. Sure, some battery failure states are violent and would unquestionably be a cause for an airplane to call a mayday and land, but something like puncturing a soft-cell battery is still a slower release than TNT.
We should just expect people to get better at understanding useful units — I'd prefer someone learns Wh since it is indeed a useful metric—kWh is the usual major unit of energy at home, and Wh is just smaller than that.
I was trying to guesstimate a theoretical upper-bound on the damage. Looking at youtubes online, it seems a labtop battery explosion is still scary and more like a handful of firecrackers than TNT, but what actually seems worse is that the explosion is followed by the labtop being on fire and producing subsequent smaller explosions. So the worse case is that the fire ignites other stuff in the plane, which includes other lithium batteries.
That is, 100 Wh = 86 kcal.
Enough energy to heat 1 kg of water by 86°C (or 86 kg of water by 1°C).
Can the battery actually release that energy as explosively as the TNT can?
I mean under normal corcumstances, not maliciously modified.
many laptops are reaching 100wh limit, dell xps 16 has 99.9wh iirc
And people dont travel with single device anymore. My usually setup has 72wh powerbank, ~20wh phone and 90wh laptop, and various smaller gadget. They are reaching nearly 200wh
(100Wh / 3.7V ~= 27000 mAh, 160Wh / 3.7V ~= 43000 mAh. Wh represents theoretical total energy, used as a normalized comparison, and Ah is used to practically determine max safe charge/discharge rates)
I also thought the reason you couldn't travel with unattached spare batteries was because something could bridge the + and - and create fire from a short, not because they were lithium. Like, traveling with my little power bank wasn't an issue because it's all enclosed.
I still send my AirTags in checked luggage. But they are small!
When people say “Lithium batteries” in this context, they mean lithium-ion rechargeable batteries.
AirTags contain lithium primary batteries, which are a totally different thing (other than both containing the element lithium).
Lithium primary batteries present no more a risk than alkaline AAs. Probably less.
Last time I ordered some lithium primary batteries from Amazon it came with the lithium sticker. I didn't look into the rules.
Lithium poses two risks:
1) The internal resistance is low enough that if it's shorted it can go into thermal runaway. This is the risk they had in mind when saying no loose cells (but note that cells merely need to be securely contained, not specifically in a device.)
2) Secondary cells can grow whiskers inside the cell. If a whisker grows just wrong it can short the cell from inside and drive it into runaway. This is the risk that they are worried about here--and it's a legitimate risk, it's brought a plane down.
The reason the rules are different in the passenger compartment is that while there's nothing on board an airplane that can fight a lithium fire it's generally a small, weak fire (the big e-bike batteries that have been in some rather dramatic videos aren't allowed) that humans can generally keep from turning into a big fire. But if nobody can fight the fire you have a big problem. Hence why lost phones are treated very differently--they could have fallen someplace where the fire wouldn't be fought.
They are more dangerous. They contain significant amounts of lithium metal, the thing that bursts into flames when in contact with water. There are similar restrictions on them for air travel.
> They contain significant amounts of lithium metal, the thing that bursts into flames when in contact with water.
How does that tell you that they are dangerous? The danger with rechargeable Lithium batteries isn't that they contact water and begin to burn.
AirTags also don’t use rechargeable lithium batteries.
Spare non-rechargeable lithium batteries are also forbidden in checked luggage[0]. AirTags are allowed because the battery is installed in a device, though Lufthansa briefly tried to argue otherwise after some bad press involving passengers finding their own lost bags[1].
Aren't non-rechargeable batteries still at least a little dangerous, though?
They're more dangerous. The reason lithium-metal batteries are "non-rechargeable" isn't that recharging them doesn't work; it's that they have an unacceptable probability of exploding during the process. Other forms of electrical, thermal, or mechanical abuse can have similarly spicy results.
Checked baggage is actually one of the better use cases for AirTags.
> When you check in bags they ask you to make sure there aren't any rechargeable devices or battery packs in them and this has also been going on for a long time.
Literally never once have I been asked that and I flew internationally 6 times a year for more than 5 years.
The only thing I can think of is maybe you look like the kind of person that would have rechargeable devices and battery packs in his luggage? :)
Before you accept your plane tickets you get asked question about illegal hazards you are flying with. Lithium batteries are clearly noted. Maybe you are just skipping that notice because you assume you are not a hazard? :)
This definitely happens stateside. Usually during check-in
They had to pull my checked bags once because I couldn't find an 18650 when they asked me about carry on batteries for a puddle jumper the last time I flew, which was nearly a decade ago at this point. They definitely care. The passengers are also supposed to care.
People who don't care are the reason I don't fly anymore.
I see a warning about rechargeable batteries in checked in luggage almost every time I check into a flight. I wonder what explains our difference of experiences. Maybe it's the fact that I mostly do electronic checkins vs just showing up at luggage drop off.
I also see this every time I check in for my Air NZ and Jetstar flights here in New Zealand. But I suspect like many I just by habit press 'No, I don't have any hazardous things to declare.' to move to the next stage of the check in process as quickly as possible! There are also signs and stickers on check in desks for those checking in manually -- but not sure how good the agents are at bringing people's attention to that.
Luggage drop-off asks the same question, here in Australia anyway
I do get pulled aside for "enhanced screening" consistently while transiting Europe :-)
I'm sure you didn't actually mean it that way though :-)
A sibling comment made me recheck the rules and it does seem like phones and other small rechargeable devices are allowed in checked baggage.
Maybe I've been unconsciously extending "power banks and rechargeable batteries" to also mean device when questioned.
Except that one time in Latin America where they would only let me put my ultra-compact camera in checked baggage if I took out the batteries.
Yup, it's happened to me. I had put the battery in my daypack while we were there. I thought it had gone back in my laptop bag for the flight--nope, it was buried in the daypack. PVG security caught it.
Yeah, I’ve been aware of this for ages. That said I’m sure lithium batteries in checked luggage are super-common in things like electric razors and tooth brushes and a ton of other things we never think about.
It’s like airplane mode. How many cellphones on a given flight are actually in airplane mode?
A phone not in airplane mode and a high capacity lithium battery are not comparable at all.
Airplane mode is largely pseudoscience/an abundance of caution/solving a different problem than a safety one. There's approximately zero chance of a phone interfering with avionics, especially modern ones, with their very low transmission power.
Supposedly the real reason has always been that mobile network operators don't like the interference high-altitude phones can cause: They're in view of potentially many base stations, some of which might be using the same frequency (which is possible since far-away regular-altitude phones are below the radio horizon and therefore not an issue).
Some evidence for this theory: The "mobile phone ban" is an FCC regulation, not an FAA one, and many (non-US) airlines have been offering on-board microcells for decades without any issues.
There's also the issue that the burden is on proving they're safe--and nobody has a reason to shell out the bucks to do so.
I do agree that interference is quite relevant. The general rule of radio is that you play nice, especially when on a licensed frequency (the cell companies have the licenses for those bands, the users do not), and a phone up high over multiple cell towers is most certainly not playing nice.
Is a lithium battery installed in a device (allowed) comparable with a lithium battery not installed in a device (not allowed)?
That's the steelman version of the parent poster's question.
An installed battery will have its terminals protected and connected to the device.
An uninstalled battery will have its terminals exposed, where they could be accidentally shorted by a stray paperclip, foil wrapper, or zip.
Danger probably primarily varies with capacity, production quality etc., not form factor (disassembled or assembled into a device), sure.
I'm not saying that current regulations of lithium batteries make sense; my argument is that the actual threat from lithium batteries seems larger than that of devices not in airplane mode (i.e. somewhere around zero).
"the real reason has always been that mobile network operators don't like the interference high-altitude phones can cause: They're in view of potentially many base stations".
This makes zero sense: the aircraft is on the ground and not moving when the ban is put in place. The ban is removed at altitude, when, you say, that the phones are potentially 'in view' of many 'cell towers' (not base stations). In fact, the plane is essentially a Faraday cage at altitude, and a phone has almost zero chance of connecting to a tower, even shoved into a window pocket.
> The ban is removed at altitude
Not in the US, where it applies throughout the flight.
And at least in Europe, the ban is due to the risk of distraction/disorientation in case of an emergency, in my experience.
> the plane is essentially a Faraday cage at altitude, and a phone has almost zero chance of connecting to a tower
Counterpoint: I have a whole collection of “welcome to <place>, your roaming charges will be <exorbitant>” text messages on my phone from countries I’ve only ever overflown at 30k feet.
This is from flights that do permit in-flight phone usage, but I believe my network has no roaming agreement with the microcell operator, so it keeps scanning and sometimes catches a bidirectional link to some long-range tower. (They’re specifically optimized for that in the North Sea and Atlantic for fishing boats, as far as I know, so for regular modern towers it’s probably less likely, but that separation hasn’t always existed.)
Supporting your counterpoint: I am a cell tower geek and I have an app on my phone that records the cell ID of every tower my phone attaches to. I once flew from Wellington to Auckland on an Airbus 320 and forgot to turn off Airplane mode. Arrived into Auckland and my app had logs around a hundred or so cells my phone managed to attach to. So it can happen. I've also had successful two-way text conversations while still in the air but low enough (e.g. when descending on approach to an airport). Saying a plane is a Faraday cage is a bit extreme but I do acknowledge the steel tubing around you will reduce the signal strength by quite a bit -- but not quite enough to 100% block out the signal it seems.
Plane windows are large compared to radio waves. They'd need to be no more than about 5 cm wide to create a full Faraday cage.
Supporting your counterpoint too: MH370 co-pilot's mobile phone did connect to a cell tower mid-flight after the hijacking. [0]
Small Li-ion batteries installed in a device are allowed in check luggage.
Loose/spare Li-ion batteries that are not installed in a device, and large batteries over 100-160 Wh are banned in checked luggage.
It's unclear to me what the official requirements are. For example this is from the TSA's site:
"Devices containing lithium metal or lithium ion batteries should be carried in carry-on baggage. Most other consumer electronic devices containing batteries are allowed in carry-on and checked baggage."
Taken literally, this is of course widely ignored. There are also various requirements around spare batteries that do include capacity limits.
> WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England.
> Poland said last month that it has arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and is searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene said Tuesday there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration.
People have been sending explodey batteries by air freight. In that context, requiring batteries on a plane to be in the cabin where they can be located, accompanied by the owner of the battery could be a good deterrent.
The IATA rules are actually quite permissive (Delta for example) for checked luggage:
> Lithium cells or batteries power many consumer electronic devices and medical devices, like watches, laptop batteries, calculators, cell phones, hearing aids and much more. You can bring lithium-battery powered devices as carry-on items or in checked baggage. Spare lithium batteries are allowed as carry-on items only with batteries individually protected to prevent short circuit.
FAA general rules are similar. The concern nowadays is that someone will drop a device into a seat mechanism and it could crush the battery.
>The concern nowadays is that someone will drop a device into a seat mechanism and it could crush the battery.
I took a few flights in the last year or two and they made an announcement along the lines of "If you happen to drop your phone between your seat, do not try to retrieve it. Call a flight attendant for help." Latest flights didn't make the same statement, but wasn't necessarily listening for it.
United at least seems to make this announcement on a routine basis.
> I can't imagine there were actually widespread battery fires for as long as I remember never having heard not to put a battery in checked luggage
This. The rules got tightened right up when this happened, because regulators basically looked at it and went 'holy shit, what if that had been a passenger aircraft?'
My wild ass guess: prices dropped, causing battery packs to get bigger and increase availability to people who may not understand or care about the risk. Additionally, with lower base cost of lithium ion batteries, you get more cheap crap that is not engineered well.
I think the proliferation of power banks is also relevant. More and more people have come to consider a power bank + cable to be normal travel gear. High energy density (it's not surrounded by equipment meant to be powered from the battery) and people often cheap out figuring the cost of a bad one being low.
Part of I feel like is that 10-15+ years ago, people only owned a couple of items with rechargable lithium batteries in them (if any at all!), and now people can have dozens. So the tiny chance of having one catching on fire is just multiplied by 10-20x just because there are many more of them around.
The other thing that was mentioned was that devices got thinner so there's a bit more chance of bending, squashing etc. stressing or puncturing the battery which can cause a fire.
And thirdly I think is cheap devices that don't have adequate protection against thermal issues etc., but that's mostly a risk during charging (that's where those hoverboard fire stories came from).
> one version of a Samsung device that had problems
It’s just that when something hits a process there’s a massive step change as everyone normalizes processes around it. Until that moment, rare events are all that you see.
> Did something maybe change about battery chemistry
I don't think there's been any single notable change, but energy density is steadily increasing.
more things have lithium batteries now and questionably manufactured devices that aren't properly certified are as well
incidents with lithium batteries on US aircraft now happen about twice a week
there has been slowly ramping up concern about lithium batteries over the last several years as a result
Note 7 introduced a lot of people to spicy pillows, it launched in 2016
I used to pack my laptop in my checked bag because I hate dealing with carry-on.
Have you heard about the pagers in Lebanon?
it’ll be the beginning of a campaign to buy US batteries rather than ‘cheap explosive’ Chinese ones
Cheap lithium ion batteries are awful, though, so if the US ones are better, I'm for it. Like I know Westinghouse doesn't manufacture their own l-ion batteries, they use white label from some manufacturer they trust, probably LG.
But I have thrown away probably 100 18650 and 26650 batteries that just sucked or were fire hazards.
The cheap junk *should be* banned as a fire hazard.
You can click through to see specific incident summaries. It looks like a significant amount (if not majority) of events are inflight on passenger flights (as opposed to on the ground, tarmac, ground handling, or freight operations). There were 85 total incidents in 2024 (there were some 9 million passenger revenue departures to give another sense of scale).
Lost phone is a problem because:
* Could be in a place that increases risk of thermal run away to begin with - classic example would be caught in the seat hinge. But even being stuck surrounding by cushioning could increase the risk of overheating
* Decreased visibility. The faster you can react (ie, try to dump the thing into a thermal protection bag / get it away from other flammables) the better. If you read the incidents, you'll see time after time the sequence "passenger notified flight attendant, who then placed it in a thermal containment bag, flight completed normally".
I could see changes to rules that will begin to prohibit storing batteries in overhead compartments (which aside from the pinch problem, actually has all the same risks of losing a phone). Or perhaps mandatory/routine pre-emptive use of thermal containment bags.
The airliners know there's no going back. They must accommodate for batteries, so they'll seek the right balance.
If you've ever had to fly with (cordless) power tools the rules allow this but the batteries must be in carry on and not be in the checked baggage (the tool itself must be checked!) and there's a limit on the max battery size (160 Wh), although I don't think there's a limit on how many you can carry-on.
For example, with DeWalt 20V batteries, 160Wh is an 8Ah (which is one of the larger sized batteries), but if you have 60V FlexVolt tools (circular saw) you are probably out of luck as they start around 6Ah (and @60V, 160Wh is only 2.6Ah), going up to 15Ah (which would be 900Wh).
For the 60V flex volt battery, which is actually 3x 20v batteries which the tool can configure in series, the advertised capacity in Ah is almost certainly measured at 20V. And 20V is also a marketing term, with nominal voltage being around 18.5. So the 6Ah battery is probably around 111Wh and the 15Ah battery is probably around 278Wh. So only one of them is oversized but you should find a data sheet that clearly shows capacity in Wh.
And this is reason why "Ah" unit is stupid and meaningless
> although I don't think there's a limit on how many you can carry-on.
Correct. So long as it's for personal use.
> [1] Quantity limits: None for most batteries — but batteries must be for use by the passenger. Batteries carried for further sale or distribution (vendor samples, etc.) are prohibited. There is a limit of two spare batteries per person for the larger lithium ion batteries described above (101–160 watt hours per battery).
Although 20 loose batteries is still plenty. The real challenge is the 15 devices per person limit
Do AirPods count as 3 devices because charging case + 2 ear pieces?
As a private person, international transport of devices with batteries is a pain.
I assume this is because the thermal containment bags they have are only rated to a certain limit, but distinct batteries hopefully won't ignite at the same time and can in any case go in different bags?
Heat a lithium secondary cell too much and it goes into runaway. When the cells are packed together in one device if one of them goes up it can take the others with it. The bigger the device the hotter it will be and harder to avoid it turning into a disaster.
IATA says a limit of 2 <160Wh batteries (with airline approval) and a limit of 20 <100Wh batteries (which is a lot!), but also airlines are free to be more or less strict as they see fit, so basically check with the airline (it's rare that they'll be less strict as a policy, but they may be OK if you clear it with them beforehand, and some are more restrictive by default).
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Thank you to whoever changed the title to omit the question mark. Question marks at the end of non questions drives me crazy. I’ve tried to accept it and accustom myself to it, but I still always trying to parse it multiple times
That was me. I'm the idiot who originally added it to the published headline before I realized it and removed it.
[deleted]
Any statement can be a question with the right tone. I actually have the exact opposite stance: we expect formal questions when in most cases it makes more sense to simply state something with a lilting tone. But maybe it's just me?
Not all statements are headlines.
I was on a flight where we had a fire inside of the cabin because of some mobile device. What I found weird was the only piece of communication being that "we are returning", around 15 minutes after the plane had turned back. I was able to smell the smoke at that point.
> What I found weird was the only piece of communication being that "we are returning"
Aviate, Navigate, Communicate
Can you elaborate on how that is relevant?
It's hard for me to imagine how the urgent aviation and navigation involved in turning the plane around takes two people 15 uninterrupted minutes, let alone the portion after turning around needing 15 uninterrupted minutes.
The order of doing things while flying…
Arranging a reroute with ATC, explaining everything, adjusting the autopilot for the new route etc. Assessment time on what to do. Those in the back don’t need to know anything until those decisions are made and executed. It’s not like there’s a negotiation to be had!
> The order of doing things while flying…
Did my comment give you the impression I didn't understand that? But I don't think it's enough of an explanation.
> Arranging a reroute with ATC, explaining everything, adjusting the autopilot for the new route etc. Assessment time on what to do. Those in the back don’t need to know anything until those decisions are made and executed. It’s not like there’s a negotiation to be had!
Do you think they turned around before most of those things?
Do you think there were no gaps where they could have communicated?
I wonder if they actually were following "Aviate, Navigate." end of checklist.
> I wonder if they actually were following "Aviate, Navigate." end of checklist.
“Communicate” means communication with air traffic control
They did that.
Communication with the passengers is good, of course, but optional, if they have time
In that case the claim boils down to "they were doing important stuff the entire time" and I... just don't believe the important stuff lasted that long contiguously.
Where does your intuition for how long actions take in a cockpit come from?
I'm not a pilot, so i have no idea. But from watching vasaviation on youtube, it always seems to take like 5-10 minutes between when they first radio the control tower there is an emergency, then they go through their checklists and stabilize things, and then they're ready to talk to the tower for the next step. Now add more back and forth and the time to actually fly to get back to a regular path, and 15 minutes might even seem too short a period of time before you've finished resolving everything and can now kick back and tell the passengers the end result.
You should watch some pilot videos online, specifically large commercial aviation videos.
Pilots have a TON of checklists and procedures. If they're up in the air approaching cruising altitude and need to turn around (even in an emergency), it's a lot of work.
They need to assess the situation, inform ATC that they are returning, copy down heading information from ATC (they generally do not just 'start turning'), start working through checklists, start dumping fuel (planes are often too heavy to land well early on in a flight), get the approach and landing procedures for the airport they are returning to, keep talking to ATC and switch from regional/approach frequencies, all while adjusting settings and doing calculations. In an emergency, they also need to report on how many people are on board, fuel levels, what their plan is, etc... all while, you know, flying the plane and being extra alert for other traffic (both in sight, on instruments, and the other radio calls) since they are deviating from what's expected.
Plus, they often have no idea what's going on, they have only heard "there is a fire onboard, we think we have it under control" from the crew.
They aren't going to talk to the passengers in a gap unless there's a major need (like Sullenberger saying "This is the captain, brace for impact". He had already committed to the Hudson long before he said that. And note that that's the minimum communication that conveys the message, he didn't spend one second on that he didn't have to.)
There's always a long list of checklists and calculations to run though. It's rare for a plane with an emergency to land as soon as possible, they generally need a little extra time to finish such tasks.
Based on how many ATC recordings I've heard where an aircraft declares an emergency, diverts, then asks ATC for a holding pattern/delay vectors to set up the landing, I consider this plausible.
They need to find, read, understand and brief the approach charts, missed approach procedures, etc., configure that all in the onboard computer, go over a stack of checklists, etc.
Why do you feel that is weird? Keeping the passengers informed isn't really a priority in a situation like that. They told you when you needed to know.
I thought that even the cabin crew did not know what's burning. There's also the feeling of helplessness -- you know something is wrong but you are not told that something is wrong. The hysteria at the back of the plane could have been alleviated by telling that the situation is under control. When the plane was landing, I could see fire trucks, an ambulance, and police of some sort driving in parallel to the plane to rush in. I only found out about the reason from the news later.
You are helpless, the cabin crew know what’s going on but aren’t telling you, and the hysteria at the back of the plane won’t be alleviated by telling them there’s a fire in the cabin, you’re making an emergency landing and to prepare for an emergency response unit upon landing.
There’s nothing you can do other than stay in your seat and keep out of the way.
What? Keeping passengers informed is zero effort, a nice thing to do, and probably a good idea. Why would you not say "we are returning due to a battery fire. The fire has been contained but we must return because X y z" or whatever.
Because passengers panic, and that makes the job of the crew harder?
Telling them why they can smell smoke and not to worry about it will make them panic less.
[dead]
> Why would you not say "we are returning due to a battery fire. The fire has been contained but we must return because X y z" or whatever.
Because as soon as you mention "fire" you'll get a bunch of dumb fucks panicking themselves so hard they're going to behave completely irrationally (like attempting to rip open the emergency doors which IS possible at low enough altitudes) - or manage to induce legitimate medical problems. Heart attack for the older folks, dyspnea up to actually going unconscious from hyperventilation for the younger folks.
- "panicking themselves so hard they're going to behave completely irrationally (like attempting to rip open the emergency doors which IS possible at low enough altitudes)"
The Denver airport fire this month was an object lesson. A panicking mob apparently ignored instructions and went out the wrong emergency exit door, onto the airplane wing, where they stood over the flaming jet-fuel smoke with no way down.
(The other doors had slides).
Yeah. Right there on the safety card--note whether there's fire outside an exit before using it.
Ugh yeah that's why you tell them it's been put out.
Bold of you to assume they'll continue to listen after the keyword "fire". In the worst case, they'll actively doubt you and, worse, start doing so in a very public way ("they're just claiming the fire is out").
And yes this shit has happened in the past. Panicked people are uncontrollable and in a critical situation, priority #1 is to avoid panic to rise at all costs because panicked people can turn a critical situation into outright disaster.
"Wait, did they just say batteries can start fires?"
Yeah, I can like individuals, but not crowds.
Crowds can do dumb shit in a self reinforcing loop.
Just curious, were they able to purge or scrub the smoke from the cabin? Seems like a battery fire in a closed space like that would be a lung hazard.
Airliners have touted in the pandemic that planes have HEPA filtration which remove 99.95+% of particles in the air, which includes smoke particles.
Battery fires will also produce other bad stuff in the air, but it's still a minor consideration compared to a fire which can bring down the plane.
The issue is how quickly they cycle the full cabin air volume.
What airline was it?
I've never been to the US but seen a lot of random videos and pilots in the US sound kind of unprofessional. They don't seem to communicate clearly and use very casual language. For instance I saw a video recently where the pilot refused a plane because he "wasn't feeling it" or something.
In that particular instance, that pilot also mentioned there were issues with engine oil pressure, IIRC, and the fuel filter was scheduled to be replaced after the long haul flight over water. Those concerning data points were what led to him not “feeling it.” That type of casual language, IMO, makes it easier for people to empathize with the conclusion based on hard facts.
Still I've never heard a pilot communicate like that. On the European airlines I've flown on the pilot would concisely and professionally explain the situation and then make a formal apology.
The language of the corporate meeting room in America is also a lot more casual than in Europe. It has zero bearing on actual professionalism (defined, “ the competence or skill expected of a professional”) given the results of American corporations (or the strong safety record of US pilots). So, while I can literally understand your point, I can’t see why it’s material to anything.
This probably happens on American airlines, but it won't make the news so you won't know about it unless you were on the plane.
OK, Karen
The pilot in command can refuse an aircraft because of unresolved mechanical or technical issues, and sometimes issues that for example are fine on a clear calm day can just not be in weather. Remember that the pilots themselves are responsible for the safety of the aircraft and all passengers for the duration of the flight, so it's up to their judgement to make sure that a flight is safe.
But a fire on a plane is pretty much the most dangerous event you can have on a flight. Especially lithium battery fires since aircraft don't have the right extinguisher for them, and staff are generally trained to quarantine the fire just long enough so it can be taken care of on the ground.
Seems like a “lithium fire box” or perhaps fireproof bag capable of containing lithium fires and smothering them would become standard on planes. Most personal electronics are fairly small as well.
The official training video by the FAA outlines that crew should extinguish the fire with onboard equipment and keep it cool with water to prevent it from thermal runaway again. In one outline, FAA doesn't endorse putting it in a bag or touching it any further than it needs to be, and another in response to commercial "FAA approved" products for lithium battery fires, does not endorse nor discourage using such products.
You can't smother a lithium battery fire because it's not using atmospheric oxygen in the first place. The only options are containment or cooling.
If the pilot isn't feeling the plane, I don't want to be on it either, so I'm not sure that's an "unprofessional" issue.
No, that's a standard part of flying safety. If you are not in the right mental state to fly you shouldn't, and especially not if the lives of hundreds of people depend on you.
That isn't the point I was making. Read again.
That video was noteworthy because it was such unusual phrasing.
It was United.
> After checks by the maintenance teams, the device was found
Do we know where the device was found?
Once you know about something you have to "do something" even if that something is stupid.
There is definitely truth to that. Example: Post 9/11 security theatre.
It's crazy to think that anyone could, at no cost to themselves, cause a large commercial plane to be turned around and wipe out maybe $1 million dollars of value from the economy; if you count fuel costs, staff costs, lost hours of hundreds of passengers.
While the point is valid, I can't help but think about "A hacker in a restaurant", english version found here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/hacker-restaurant-alexander-s... (it's not mine and I'm in no way affiliated with the owner/author of the page).
So weird to me that this blog post is on linkedin and clicking your link opened the linkedin app on my phone
Airlines have hugely benefited from moving travelers from paper tickets to the use of their phones, where everything is done in the airline's app. Even if a few flights get turned around now and then, that seems trivial compared to the benefits:
- No need to print/distribute physical tickets
- Check-ins via the app reduces the need for ground personnel
- They can push inflight menus, shopping items, promotions etc.
- Flight updates and other notifications can get pushed to your device
- Integration of loyalty systems like airmiles
- They get to track various user behaviors
Passengers have benefited as well. Traditional tickets weren’t quite like cash but they were a big hassle to replace if lost.
Paper tickets, yes. Paper boarding passes, no. Replacing a paper boarding pass has been easy since airlines switched to an electronic ticketing system where the actual ticket is an entry in the airline's database.
The person I was responding to was talking about tickets. I will print a paper boarding pass if I'm at home and I can print it easily when I check in in advance but I just do it at the airport if it's not convenient. (I don't like making myself more dependent on my phone than I need to be.)
That comment introduces some confusion with "moving travelers from paper tickets to the use of their phones" before giving a mixed list of benefits of e-tickets and mobile boarding passes.
E-tickets were introduced in the 1990s, and essentially all airlines were using them by 2008. They don't have anything to do with phones. Mobile boarding passes are a more recent development.
It is the only sane way to handle things like this and I think it is the reason air travel is so secure that most regulations and practices make sense.
You want the crew to be fully in charge of security. If they think the plane should turn around, it turns around. In the long term it is way cheaper to eat those costs then to start a whole industry about litigation for events like these, probably causing everyone to buy additional insurance etc.
You definitely don't want to give any incentive to anyone to "overlook" possible problems.
Wipe out 1 million dollars from the economy?? Au contraire mon frere they just added 1 million dollars to GDP!
This sort of thing happens all the time, just less obviously. For example in my city it's not unusual to hear that a major tram line is stopped during the morning commute due to a car driver blocking it inconsiderately or colliding.
Once amortized against successful journeys the overall cost per passenger isn't significant. When it is, that's when we start seeing liability moved to the instigator.
This train of reasoning goes to some very sick places very quickly. A more reasonable version of this is "it's crazy to think that anyone could be put in a position to etc etc". I.e. we live in a big complicated world - if an individual drops the production table, almost certainly something else was wrong besides that person making a mistake.
I don't think the parent comment is saying that this passenger is at fault, just that there is a lot of potential for abuse.
"upgrade me to business class or I won't remember where my phone is as we'll have to go back"
I was thinking more in the direction of adversary government/groups getting a few people to "lose" their phones.
I strongly advise buying and always using a "phone lanyard" to tether your phone to your belt loop. A well-working example is ASIN B07ZSDFY85. With it, your phone won't get lost or get left behind. Even if the risk of losing the phone is just once in ten years, it still is worth it. If it drops with the tether, you can just lift the tether cable to get it back. If you're tall, you may need two, or something longer. Note that the tether works only with a compatible phone case to hold it in place.
I would lose 5 phones before I wore that embarrassing thing
Why is it embarrassing? That's entirely in your mind. It is objectively quite neutral. It's not about the cost of the phone... it's about the massive effort that goes into setting up a new phone, literally multiple weeks of effort. Also, life can be disrupted a fair bit without a phone. There is also some data loss of apps that haven't fully been backed up. If your phone use is light and ordinary, you don't need it.
I would find a lanyard attached to my belt or around my neck awkward I think. I do use a wrist lanyard through--not som much for this purpose but because I worry that I'll be taking a photo from a bridge and someone will jostle me or I'll otherwise drop the phone in some particularly inconvenient location.
I keep it just as I keep my keychain, hooked in a belt loop. I guess you will understand only after you have forgotten your phone somewhere. When you do, I hope you get it back.
why don't we throw in a belt pouch as well??
Lanyard to your *belt*?
I hike, a phone falling is a realistic issue. I use a lanyard around my neck, though, not to my belt. A lanyard long enough to reach from your belt to use is likely to let it hit the ground. I've had it slip out a few times and be caught by the lanyard--without hitting the ground.
Bluetooth from a smartwatch or BLE locator beacon in your keys/wallet/bag works almost as well and is way more convenient.
I have a smartwatch, but it won't help at all when leaving your phone in an Uber/Lyft which takes off. You will then be left with the awareness of having just left your phone rather than actually your phone.
>With your Apple Watch, in the Find My app, or on the web at iCloud.com/find, you can play a sound to help find your device if it's nearby or find it on a map.
It can be tracked but that is entirely different from not losing it in the first place, which is what a lanyard does. Imagine leaving it on a public bus... good luck ever getting that back.
When I left my wallet on Boston’s subway, I was able to retrieve it the next day with its contents intact. I was pleasantly shocked.
I recommend a good pocket protector to accompany the phone lanyard. Here’s a nice leather option. B08S6KMCGM
Well I thought your reply was both amusing and technically relevant...
I'd never be caught dead with that lanyard haha so it's amusing to see it recommended, though I don't blame others for using one!
I've not considered it, but with the rise of phones and e-ink and so on, I assume pocket protectors are even less common than they were prior?
Here's my countervailing advice for keeping your phone safe: don't use a case or any protection at all. This trains you to take care of it.
This little experiment lasted for about 6 weeks for me before I broke front and back glass and cracked the camera lens in one go on a cement floor. I’ll take the $6 rubber case now and save me some grief.
I think this is akin to the "wearing a seatbelt makes me drive more dangerously" argument. (I also don't use a case, but mainly because I don't like the extra bulk and don't mind dinging my phone up a bit, not because I think I'll take better care of it).
Do you also have a safety spike [1] installed in your car?
I use this method and have only broken one phone in ten years because of it...
I don't use this method and have broken zero phones in ten years because of it.
Each phone gets a 9h glass screen protector and thin TPU case, each about $10 on Amazon. I crack the screen protector maybe once every 8 months and there is usually three screen protectors in the pack I bought, so I just replace the cheap screen protector.
When I drop the phone, I try to soften the impact with my shoe.
That doesn’t work for current gen iPhones, whose screens you can scratch seemingly with pocket mint.
One thing I do appreciate about Apple is their new ceramic shield material on the 6.1-inch screen. It actually does appear to be more scratch-resistant than other smartphones. Working our way up through the Mohs scale of hardness, usually I can feel the level-6 pick grab the glass and start scratching, but with this latest generation of ceramic shield, it still feels pretty smooth—even with that sharp level-6 pick. The marks are still appearing, but they're so faint and subtle that I almost can't say "scratches at a level-6, with deeper grooves at a level-7" anymore. Almost.
You can get more scratch-resistant screen protectors, but as far as the builtin glass I don't think Apple is falling behind anywhere.
I carry a work iPhone 15 Pro and a personal 16 Pro, actually my second, I had a warranty replacement when faceid stopped working. It scratches easily, especially on the edges. The glass is too hard.
The 15 is pristine. And I treat it worse! I typically carry iPhones naked and the only mishap was I dropped two iPhone 6 because that thing was like a stick of butter.
That's a surprising difference in durability between the 15 Pro and your 16 Pros! Interesting about the edges scratching so easily
> The glass is too hard.
Being too hard should make it easier to shatter but harder to scratch, shouldn't it?
Is the risk of a phone overheating and exploding the battery less if the owner knows where it is?
Yes, because if you know where it is, you likely also know it's not wedged into a seat hinge getting crushed as you attempt to recline.
It's not about the risk of it going up, but in whether it will be promptly noted and contained if it does go up.
I think the fear is that the user's phone is in the checked luggage.
At least in the USA, cell phones are allowed checked luggage. However, they are supposed to be powered of and "protected up prevent unintentional activation or damage".
I realize this was an Air France flight, but I suspect the checked rules are nearly the same.
Because lithium batteries that could now be in the luggage compartment.
The world needs a new rating like IPX rating for battery fire hazard.
How did they know the phone was lost?
Presumably a passenger came to them and asked for help extracting their phone from a crevice in a seat.
If this keeps happening, providing an on-board toolkit and cross-training flight attendants in proper seat disassembly and reassembly could well pay off.
Insurance companies and legal departments will nip that idea in the bud.
Turkish Airlines did exactly that (partially disassemble the seat) on a flight I've been on a little while ago. (Someone lost their phone in a business class seat.)
The risks seem to be lower than the ones associated with landing with a device stuck somewhere.
What I don't understand is why they don't construct the seats for less chances of things getting lost in them. Some seats have huge holes to lose things in…
Huge holes are a lower risk since objects simply pass through
Except these holes open into the seat electromechanics, where moving the seat can easily catch and crush a phone…
(Business class seats can adjust themselves with a person sitting in them, quite sure that's enough force to 'fold' a phone)
In this case, if the legal department paints pictures of doom, and the ops department paints pictures of cost savings, it's up in the air (pun intended) which management will pick.
A competent legal department will provide a realistic assessment of risk to go into this decision making process, not just obstruct everything.
Now we're losing international flights to lost phones? Sodium batteries can't come soon enough.
I can't blame them, an in-air cabin fire is no joke. This[1] happened on the ground and destroyed the plane. Another very recent one[2] was in the air and thankfully extinguished. But I don't see sodium batteries in portable devices any time soon: too bulky for the capacity. LFP, perhaps.
https://archive.ph/x1d1c
I feel like I'm having some sort of Mandela Effect moment, but maybe I'm missing something a lot more obvious?
I've had portable charging battery packs for at least a decade. I wasn't special. They were common. But it's only in the last few years that I've been hearing any concern about the batteries in consumer electronic devices causing aircraft fires.
I remember hearing about the ones in hoverboards, and then there was one version of a Samsung device that had problems, but nobody generalized to "all such electronic items must be in the cabin with you, and if you lose track of yours, we're turning the plane around."
Did something maybe change about battery chemistry that I don't know about? Or did the design change, such that the batteries aren't protected anymore or have enough more capacity that they've become dangerous?
I can't imagine there were actually widespread battery fires for as long as I remember never having heard not to put a battery in checked luggage, so what else changed such that this is such a major issue now when it wasn't before?
Devices are smaller and portable batteries are treated roughly. Also, many devices have batteries with custom-ish shapes that may be better or worse than standardized designs that were popular before devices get thinner.
The other thing is that consumers won’t be aware of risks for semi-disposable batteries. I found out a few days ago that a high capacity Anker battery that I own was recalled last year. Would such a thing even happen for a random battery sold at CVS?
I was in a leadership role for an org with about 95k laptops. We had, on average 4-6 significant battery incidents with an ignition per year. Anywhere from 30-250 reported battery swelling events annually. It’s enough that we provided kits for safe storage of at risk batteries to every field office.
Now that’s a pretty low risk of an incident, but in an airline environment the impact of that risk is very high.
I'm almost surprised that you had that few battery swelling incidents although I assume that in a corporate setting laptops tend to get refreshed before you're likely to have swollen batteries. I've had one myself in an Apple MacBook Pro but it was a pretty old model when that happened. (Also an older iPhone that was driving my stereo system when I went to replace it after doing an upgrade.)
I suspect there’s more swelling that we don’t hear about. Environment matters though. Phones and tablets with wide operating ranges (Samsung was rated for like 0-120 F) have higher failure rates outdoors than iPhones… but if you try to use iPhones in a hot parking lot in the summer or keep them in an outer pocket in the winter, they’ll shut down. (The device doesn’t break, but it fails for the user)
For laptops the target was 4 year replacement for most and 2 year for high performance. IIRC, there was a Dell model where the swelling and battery shape was such that the device was super wobbly and damaged that spiked the numbers. Most devices would just get tagged as a bad battery and repaired or replaced.
If I was still there or in that role, I’d collect more battery data in general, as it’s both an employee safety and perhaps a quantitative difference that can be leveraged in purchasing.
> more swelling that we don’t hear about.
I guarantee there is. Device quits working, user doesn't know why, they discard it.
My only swelling incident so far was on a makeup mirror my wife owns. The battery is in a compartment whose door popped off due to the swelling. She asked me only when she couldn't get it to latch again. I looked at it and immediately told her not to plug it in.
Despite the fact that this thing cost hundreds of dollars, and they do sell some spare parts, the battery isn't one - and the battery leads are soldered directly to the circuit board. After some hunting around for a compatible battery (size was a major restriction), I bought it (~$15), cut the connector off, and soldered it to the board.
I tried emailing customer service; never got a reply.
>it’s both an employee safety
Yeah, you know if a work laptop catches fire in someone's house, especially if there's appreciable damage much less worse, there's not only your concern for your employee's well-being but serious lawyers are going to get involved and your company is probably going to write a pretty large check to make it all go away.
Not lithium battery related but I recently had a built-in microwave control panel (apparently) decide to self-immolate at 4am. The fire department responded and I'm fine and the direct fire damage is relatively limited but smoke throughout house. The interior is emptied out, the interior is being redone to a significant degree, and this will be basically months of work and lots of money even given insurance. Wouldn't do wonders for my productivity over the rest of the year if I were still working full-time either.
Living out of hotel. Can't imagine the situation with young children and someone who can't write large checks even if they're partially reimbursed.
Was it a General Electric microwave? I had two that tried to burn my house down. I didnt know the first one was the same company.
What I did is not buy another microwave.
Samsung. About 15 years old but still shouldn't happen. "Funnily" enough as I vaguely recall, the competition was GE.
I'm getting countertop Panasonic 4-in-1. I'm getting rid of double ovens (the second of which I basically never used) in favor of a range, which will be induction in place than my prior propane cooktop.
i'm jealous. Hope your kitchen setup brings you much joy.
These numbers are sobering - thank you for providing. Even a single battery ignition incident can burn my house.
Most people get off with it, but after I found an old iPhone with a badly swollen battery (and put it in my fireplace; this was during the summer until I could properly dispose of it), I became much more cautious about keeping old laptops and the like hanging around the house for old time's sake.
I know I have some truly ancient stuff up in the attic for basically nostalgia and I should just recycle.
> never having heard not to put a battery in checked luggage
Maybe not conventional batteries, but you've been disallowed from putting lithium batteries in checked luggage for at least 16 years. I remember being dragged into the bowels of an airport by security to open my checked bag because I'd forgotten a device in it. That was in 2009.
When you check in bags they ask you to make sure there aren't any rechargeable devices or battery packs in them and this has also been going on for a long time.
> “you've been disallowed from putting lithium batteries in checked luggage for at least 16 years.”
This rule only applies to loose (spare) Li-ion batteries, not batteries which are installed in a device.
Batteries over 160 Wh (in some cases, 100 Wh) are banned whether they’re in a device or not, but that’s far bigger than any phone battery: an iPhone 16 Pro Max battery is about 16 Wh, and typical laptop batteries are around 60 Wh.
IATA Li-ion battery fact sheet: https://www.iata.org/en/iata-repository/pressroom/fact-sheet...
This rule only applies to loose (spare) Li-ion batteries, not batteries which are installed in a device.
I've heard of people ordering 18650s online and getting them along with a free flashlight in which they came; I wonder if this regulation is why.
Almost definitely for import tax/restriction reasons. Putting the battery inside a cheap flashlight places it in a separate category than a battery by itself. Felt on the bottom of Converse sneakers to classify as slippers is a classic example of this.
The battery limit described is for individual passengers, not air freight.
Air freight for Li-ion batteries is pretty strictly regulated too, especially when the freight is carried on passenger aircraft.
Yup, any time I order anything from Amazon that has lithium it comes with a big warning sticker about shipping restrictions. Even if it's a fixed battery inside a device.
See UPS Flight 6 for a very good reason about why the flight of lithium batteries is regulated
As always, Admiral Cloudberg has a deep-dive into this crash: https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/alone-in-the-inferno-the...
Slightly off topic, but she does an amazing job.
I watched both Mentour Pilot and Green Dot Aviation's videos about it. Mentour Pilot's video terrified me, as it simulated the audio of being inside the cockpit, with GPWS, fire warnings, the sound of the fire all going on at the same time
Green Dot Aviation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7uw6VzWHcM
Mentour Pilot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y50saxfTqQA
Indeed. If it’s sold as already in a device, it doesn’t need the battery sticker and in general the regulations around shipping it are significantly less onerous.
Interesting, at the airport I always see general "no (devices with) batteries in checked luggage" signs.
One time I had an old phone with battery removed in checked luggage and when I arrived at my destination, I saw they fiddled with the tsa lock and the phone was taken out of the envelope I had it in and just lying on top of my clothes. I mean maybe they saw it in an xray and wanted to steal it and then saw it was some old junk phone, no idea how good the xrays come out to tell beforehand whether you're dealing with an iPhone or 7 year old android midrange...
Notably the 16” MacBook Pro (every model since 2019) goes right up to the 100 Wh limit.
For comparison, 100 Wh is 360,000 joules, which is just under either the energy released by explosion of 100 grams of TNT, or the kinetic energy of a small car at highway speeds, or the kinetic energy of 1 gram meteor hitting Earth.[1] (Sorry, I've never been a fan of the "Wh" unit and so wanted to put that total energy into layman terms.)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(energy)
Or a McDonalds medium fries?
EDIT: doh, just realised you were comparing with other forms of damage. That said, I think its truly amazing that a snack has the same energy as a nasty car crash. Mind blown.
To me it is hard to visualize how much damage the total energy gained from digesting chemical bonds of food could do to an airplane. I can better visualize the damage that could be done by a highway car crash or detonating a handful of TNT in an airplane.
These counterfactual comparisons are a slippery slope and not as helpful as you think. I hardly think that you, I, or most others have an intuitive understanding for what happens when a 1 gram meteor hits earth. Have you ever witnessed that?
The average failure state of a battery is not similar to detonating a handful of TNT on an airplane, which is a more instantaneous explosion. Sure, some battery failure states are violent and would unquestionably be a cause for an airplane to call a mayday and land, but something like puncturing a soft-cell battery is still a slower release than TNT.
We should just expect people to get better at understanding useful units — I'd prefer someone learns Wh since it is indeed a useful metric—kWh is the usual major unit of energy at home, and Wh is just smaller than that.
I was trying to guesstimate a theoretical upper-bound on the damage. Looking at youtubes online, it seems a labtop battery explosion is still scary and more like a handful of firecrackers than TNT, but what actually seems worse is that the explosion is followed by the labtop being on fire and producing subsequent smaller explosions. So the worse case is that the fire ignites other stuff in the plane, which includes other lithium batteries.
That is, 100 Wh = 86 kcal.
Enough energy to heat 1 kg of water by 86°C (or 86 kg of water by 1°C).
Can the battery actually release that energy as explosively as the TNT can? I mean under normal corcumstances, not maliciously modified.
many laptops are reaching 100wh limit, dell xps 16 has 99.9wh iirc
And people dont travel with single device anymore. My usually setup has 72wh powerbank, ~20wh phone and 90wh laptop, and various smaller gadget. They are reaching nearly 200wh
(100Wh / 3.7V ~= 27000 mAh, 160Wh / 3.7V ~= 43000 mAh. Wh represents theoretical total energy, used as a normalized comparison, and Ah is used to practically determine max safe charge/discharge rates)
I also thought the reason you couldn't travel with unattached spare batteries was because something could bridge the + and - and create fire from a short, not because they were lithium. Like, traveling with my little power bank wasn't an issue because it's all enclosed.
I still send my AirTags in checked luggage. But they are small!
When people say “Lithium batteries” in this context, they mean lithium-ion rechargeable batteries.
AirTags contain lithium primary batteries, which are a totally different thing (other than both containing the element lithium).
Lithium primary batteries present no more a risk than alkaline AAs. Probably less.
Last time I ordered some lithium primary batteries from Amazon it came with the lithium sticker. I didn't look into the rules.
Lithium poses two risks:
1) The internal resistance is low enough that if it's shorted it can go into thermal runaway. This is the risk they had in mind when saying no loose cells (but note that cells merely need to be securely contained, not specifically in a device.)
2) Secondary cells can grow whiskers inside the cell. If a whisker grows just wrong it can short the cell from inside and drive it into runaway. This is the risk that they are worried about here--and it's a legitimate risk, it's brought a plane down.
The reason the rules are different in the passenger compartment is that while there's nothing on board an airplane that can fight a lithium fire it's generally a small, weak fire (the big e-bike batteries that have been in some rather dramatic videos aren't allowed) that humans can generally keep from turning into a big fire. But if nobody can fight the fire you have a big problem. Hence why lost phones are treated very differently--they could have fallen someplace where the fire wouldn't be fought.
They are more dangerous. They contain significant amounts of lithium metal, the thing that bursts into flames when in contact with water. There are similar restrictions on them for air travel.
> They contain significant amounts of lithium metal, the thing that bursts into flames when in contact with water.
How does that tell you that they are dangerous? The danger with rechargeable Lithium batteries isn't that they contact water and begin to burn.
AirTags also don’t use rechargeable lithium batteries.
Spare non-rechargeable lithium batteries are also forbidden in checked luggage[0]. AirTags are allowed because the battery is installed in a device, though Lufthansa briefly tried to argue otherwise after some bad press involving passengers finding their own lost bags[1].
[0] https://www.faa.gov/hazmat/packsafe/lithium-batteries
[1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/10/lufthansa-awkwardly-...
Aren't non-rechargeable batteries still at least a little dangerous, though?
They're more dangerous. The reason lithium-metal batteries are "non-rechargeable" isn't that recharging them doesn't work; it's that they have an unacceptable probability of exploding during the process. Other forms of electrical, thermal, or mechanical abuse can have similarly spicy results.
Checked baggage is actually one of the better use cases for AirTags.
> When you check in bags they ask you to make sure there aren't any rechargeable devices or battery packs in them and this has also been going on for a long time.
Literally never once have I been asked that and I flew internationally 6 times a year for more than 5 years.
The only thing I can think of is maybe you look like the kind of person that would have rechargeable devices and battery packs in his luggage? :)
Before you accept your plane tickets you get asked question about illegal hazards you are flying with. Lithium batteries are clearly noted. Maybe you are just skipping that notice because you assume you are not a hazard? :)
This definitely happens stateside. Usually during check-in
They had to pull my checked bags once because I couldn't find an 18650 when they asked me about carry on batteries for a puddle jumper the last time I flew, which was nearly a decade ago at this point. They definitely care. The passengers are also supposed to care.
People who don't care are the reason I don't fly anymore.
I see a warning about rechargeable batteries in checked in luggage almost every time I check into a flight. I wonder what explains our difference of experiences. Maybe it's the fact that I mostly do electronic checkins vs just showing up at luggage drop off.
I also see this every time I check in for my Air NZ and Jetstar flights here in New Zealand. But I suspect like many I just by habit press 'No, I don't have any hazardous things to declare.' to move to the next stage of the check in process as quickly as possible! There are also signs and stickers on check in desks for those checking in manually -- but not sure how good the agents are at bringing people's attention to that.
Luggage drop-off asks the same question, here in Australia anyway
I do get pulled aside for "enhanced screening" consistently while transiting Europe :-)
I'm sure you didn't actually mean it that way though :-)
A sibling comment made me recheck the rules and it does seem like phones and other small rechargeable devices are allowed in checked baggage.
Maybe I've been unconsciously extending "power banks and rechargeable batteries" to also mean device when questioned.
Except that one time in Latin America where they would only let me put my ultra-compact camera in checked baggage if I took out the batteries.
Yup, it's happened to me. I had put the battery in my daypack while we were there. I thought it had gone back in my laptop bag for the flight--nope, it was buried in the daypack. PVG security caught it.
Yeah, I’ve been aware of this for ages. That said I’m sure lithium batteries in checked luggage are super-common in things like electric razors and tooth brushes and a ton of other things we never think about.
It’s like airplane mode. How many cellphones on a given flight are actually in airplane mode?
A phone not in airplane mode and a high capacity lithium battery are not comparable at all.
Airplane mode is largely pseudoscience/an abundance of caution/solving a different problem than a safety one. There's approximately zero chance of a phone interfering with avionics, especially modern ones, with their very low transmission power.
Supposedly the real reason has always been that mobile network operators don't like the interference high-altitude phones can cause: They're in view of potentially many base stations, some of which might be using the same frequency (which is possible since far-away regular-altitude phones are below the radio horizon and therefore not an issue).
Some evidence for this theory: The "mobile phone ban" is an FCC regulation, not an FAA one, and many (non-US) airlines have been offering on-board microcells for decades without any issues.
There's also the issue that the burden is on proving they're safe--and nobody has a reason to shell out the bucks to do so.
I do agree that interference is quite relevant. The general rule of radio is that you play nice, especially when on a licensed frequency (the cell companies have the licenses for those bands, the users do not), and a phone up high over multiple cell towers is most certainly not playing nice.
Is a lithium battery installed in a device (allowed) comparable with a lithium battery not installed in a device (not allowed)?
That's the steelman version of the parent poster's question.
An installed battery will have its terminals protected and connected to the device.
An uninstalled battery will have its terminals exposed, where they could be accidentally shorted by a stray paperclip, foil wrapper, or zip.
Danger probably primarily varies with capacity, production quality etc., not form factor (disassembled or assembled into a device), sure.
I'm not saying that current regulations of lithium batteries make sense; my argument is that the actual threat from lithium batteries seems larger than that of devices not in airplane mode (i.e. somewhere around zero).
"the real reason has always been that mobile network operators don't like the interference high-altitude phones can cause: They're in view of potentially many base stations". This makes zero sense: the aircraft is on the ground and not moving when the ban is put in place. The ban is removed at altitude, when, you say, that the phones are potentially 'in view' of many 'cell towers' (not base stations). In fact, the plane is essentially a Faraday cage at altitude, and a phone has almost zero chance of connecting to a tower, even shoved into a window pocket.
> The ban is removed at altitude
Not in the US, where it applies throughout the flight.
And at least in Europe, the ban is due to the risk of distraction/disorientation in case of an emergency, in my experience.
> the plane is essentially a Faraday cage at altitude, and a phone has almost zero chance of connecting to a tower
Counterpoint: I have a whole collection of “welcome to <place>, your roaming charges will be <exorbitant>” text messages on my phone from countries I’ve only ever overflown at 30k feet.
This is from flights that do permit in-flight phone usage, but I believe my network has no roaming agreement with the microcell operator, so it keeps scanning and sometimes catches a bidirectional link to some long-range tower. (They’re specifically optimized for that in the North Sea and Atlantic for fishing boats, as far as I know, so for regular modern towers it’s probably less likely, but that separation hasn’t always existed.)
Supporting your counterpoint: I am a cell tower geek and I have an app on my phone that records the cell ID of every tower my phone attaches to. I once flew from Wellington to Auckland on an Airbus 320 and forgot to turn off Airplane mode. Arrived into Auckland and my app had logs around a hundred or so cells my phone managed to attach to. So it can happen. I've also had successful two-way text conversations while still in the air but low enough (e.g. when descending on approach to an airport). Saying a plane is a Faraday cage is a bit extreme but I do acknowledge the steel tubing around you will reduce the signal strength by quite a bit -- but not quite enough to 100% block out the signal it seems.
Plane windows are large compared to radio waves. They'd need to be no more than about 5 cm wide to create a full Faraday cage.
Supporting your counterpoint too: MH370 co-pilot's mobile phone did connect to a cell tower mid-flight after the hijacking. [0]
[0] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6839167/MH370-pilot...
Small Li-ion batteries installed in a device are allowed in check luggage.
Loose/spare Li-ion batteries that are not installed in a device, and large batteries over 100-160 Wh are banned in checked luggage.
It's unclear to me what the official requirements are. For example this is from the TSA's site:
"Devices containing lithium metal or lithium ion batteries should be carried in carry-on baggage. Most other consumer electronic devices containing batteries are allowed in carry-on and checked baggage."
Taken literally, this is of course widely ignored. There are also various requirements around spare batteries that do include capacity limits.
https://apnews.com/article/russia-poland-germany-sabotage-ca...
November 5, 2024
> WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England.
> Poland said last month that it has arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and is searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene said Tuesday there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration.
People have been sending explodey batteries by air freight. In that context, requiring batteries on a plane to be in the cabin where they can be located, accompanied by the owner of the battery could be a good deterrent.
The IATA rules are actually quite permissive (Delta for example) for checked luggage:
> Lithium cells or batteries power many consumer electronic devices and medical devices, like watches, laptop batteries, calculators, cell phones, hearing aids and much more. You can bring lithium-battery powered devices as carry-on items or in checked baggage. Spare lithium batteries are allowed as carry-on items only with batteries individually protected to prevent short circuit.
FAA general rules are similar. The concern nowadays is that someone will drop a device into a seat mechanism and it could crush the battery.
>The concern nowadays is that someone will drop a device into a seat mechanism and it could crush the battery.
I took a few flights in the last year or two and they made an announcement along the lines of "If you happen to drop your phone between your seat, do not try to retrieve it. Call a flight attendant for help." Latest flights didn't make the same statement, but wasn't necessarily listening for it.
United at least seems to make this announcement on a routine basis.
> I can't imagine there were actually widespread battery fires for as long as I remember never having heard not to put a battery in checked luggage
This was pretty much the initiating incident, 15 years ago now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UPS_Airlines_Flight_6
This. The rules got tightened right up when this happened, because regulators basically looked at it and went 'holy shit, what if that had been a passenger aircraft?'
My wild ass guess: prices dropped, causing battery packs to get bigger and increase availability to people who may not understand or care about the risk. Additionally, with lower base cost of lithium ion batteries, you get more cheap crap that is not engineered well.
I think the proliferation of power banks is also relevant. More and more people have come to consider a power bank + cable to be normal travel gear. High energy density (it's not surrounded by equipment meant to be powered from the battery) and people often cheap out figuring the cost of a bad one being low.
Part of I feel like is that 10-15+ years ago, people only owned a couple of items with rechargable lithium batteries in them (if any at all!), and now people can have dozens. So the tiny chance of having one catching on fire is just multiplied by 10-20x just because there are many more of them around.
The other thing that was mentioned was that devices got thinner so there's a bit more chance of bending, squashing etc. stressing or puncturing the battery which can cause a fire.
And thirdly I think is cheap devices that don't have adequate protection against thermal issues etc., but that's mostly a risk during charging (that's where those hoverboard fire stories came from).
> one version of a Samsung device that had problems
The best GTA mod: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IVk8PsSgEI
It’s just that when something hits a process there’s a massive step change as everyone normalizes processes around it. Until that moment, rare events are all that you see.
> Did something maybe change about battery chemistry
I don't think there's been any single notable change, but energy density is steadily increasing.
more things have lithium batteries now and questionably manufactured devices that aren't properly certified are as well
incidents with lithium batteries on US aircraft now happen about twice a week
there has been slowly ramping up concern about lithium batteries over the last several years as a result
Note 7 introduced a lot of people to spicy pillows, it launched in 2016
I used to pack my laptop in my checked bag because I hate dealing with carry-on.
Have you heard about the pagers in Lebanon?
it’ll be the beginning of a campaign to buy US batteries rather than ‘cheap explosive’ Chinese ones
Cheap lithium ion batteries are awful, though, so if the US ones are better, I'm for it. Like I know Westinghouse doesn't manufacture their own l-ion batteries, they use white label from some manufacturer they trust, probably LG.
But I have thrown away probably 100 18650 and 26650 batteries that just sucked or were fire hazards.
The cheap junk *should be* banned as a fire hazard.
For a sense of scale, the FAA has been tracking battery related incidents, and you can take a looksie here: https://www.faa.gov/hazmat/resources/lithium_batteries/incid...
You can click through to see specific incident summaries. It looks like a significant amount (if not majority) of events are inflight on passenger flights (as opposed to on the ground, tarmac, ground handling, or freight operations). There were 85 total incidents in 2024 (there were some 9 million passenger revenue departures to give another sense of scale).
Lost phone is a problem because:
* Could be in a place that increases risk of thermal run away to begin with - classic example would be caught in the seat hinge. But even being stuck surrounding by cushioning could increase the risk of overheating
* Decreased visibility. The faster you can react (ie, try to dump the thing into a thermal protection bag / get it away from other flammables) the better. If you read the incidents, you'll see time after time the sequence "passenger notified flight attendant, who then placed it in a thermal containment bag, flight completed normally".
I could see changes to rules that will begin to prohibit storing batteries in overhead compartments (which aside from the pinch problem, actually has all the same risks of losing a phone). Or perhaps mandatory/routine pre-emptive use of thermal containment bags.
The airliners know there's no going back. They must accommodate for batteries, so they'll seek the right balance.
If you've ever had to fly with (cordless) power tools the rules allow this but the batteries must be in carry on and not be in the checked baggage (the tool itself must be checked!) and there's a limit on the max battery size (160 Wh), although I don't think there's a limit on how many you can carry-on.
For example, with DeWalt 20V batteries, 160Wh is an 8Ah (which is one of the larger sized batteries), but if you have 60V FlexVolt tools (circular saw) you are probably out of luck as they start around 6Ah (and @60V, 160Wh is only 2.6Ah), going up to 15Ah (which would be 900Wh).
For the 60V flex volt battery, which is actually 3x 20v batteries which the tool can configure in series, the advertised capacity in Ah is almost certainly measured at 20V. And 20V is also a marketing term, with nominal voltage being around 18.5. So the 6Ah battery is probably around 111Wh and the 15Ah battery is probably around 278Wh. So only one of them is oversized but you should find a data sheet that clearly shows capacity in Wh.
And this is reason why "Ah" unit is stupid and meaningless
> although I don't think there's a limit on how many you can carry-on.
Correct. So long as it's for personal use.
> [1] Quantity limits: None for most batteries — but batteries must be for use by the passenger. Batteries carried for further sale or distribution (vendor samples, etc.) are prohibited. There is a limit of two spare batteries per person for the larger lithium ion batteries described above (101–160 watt hours per battery).
[1]: https://www.faa.gov/hazmat/packsafe/lithium-batteries
Unfortunately airlines often have more strict rules. Lufthansa says 20 max for example
https://www.lufthansa.com/us/en/prepare-for-your-trip/baggag...
Although 20 loose batteries is still plenty. The real challenge is the 15 devices per person limit
Do AirPods count as 3 devices because charging case + 2 ear pieces?
As a private person, international transport of devices with batteries is a pain.
I assume this is because the thermal containment bags they have are only rated to a certain limit, but distinct batteries hopefully won't ignite at the same time and can in any case go in different bags?
Heat a lithium secondary cell too much and it goes into runaway. When the cells are packed together in one device if one of them goes up it can take the others with it. The bigger the device the hotter it will be and harder to avoid it turning into a disaster.
IATA says a limit of 2 <160Wh batteries (with airline approval) and a limit of 20 <100Wh batteries (which is a lot!), but also airlines are free to be more or less strict as they see fit, so basically check with the airline (it's rare that they'll be less strict as a policy, but they may be OK if you clear it with them beforehand, and some are more restrictive by default).
Thank you to whoever changed the title to omit the question mark. Question marks at the end of non questions drives me crazy. I’ve tried to accept it and accustom myself to it, but I still always trying to parse it multiple times
That was me. I'm the idiot who originally added it to the published headline before I realized it and removed it.
Any statement can be a question with the right tone. I actually have the exact opposite stance: we expect formal questions when in most cases it makes more sense to simply state something with a lilting tone. But maybe it's just me?
Not all statements are headlines.
I was on a flight where we had a fire inside of the cabin because of some mobile device. What I found weird was the only piece of communication being that "we are returning", around 15 minutes after the plane had turned back. I was able to smell the smoke at that point.
> What I found weird was the only piece of communication being that "we are returning"
Aviate, Navigate, Communicate
Can you elaborate on how that is relevant?
It's hard for me to imagine how the urgent aviation and navigation involved in turning the plane around takes two people 15 uninterrupted minutes, let alone the portion after turning around needing 15 uninterrupted minutes.
The order of doing things while flying…
Arranging a reroute with ATC, explaining everything, adjusting the autopilot for the new route etc. Assessment time on what to do. Those in the back don’t need to know anything until those decisions are made and executed. It’s not like there’s a negotiation to be had!
> The order of doing things while flying…
Did my comment give you the impression I didn't understand that? But I don't think it's enough of an explanation.
> Arranging a reroute with ATC, explaining everything, adjusting the autopilot for the new route etc. Assessment time on what to do. Those in the back don’t need to know anything until those decisions are made and executed. It’s not like there’s a negotiation to be had!
Do you think they turned around before most of those things?
Do you think there were no gaps where they could have communicated?
I wonder if they actually were following "Aviate, Navigate." end of checklist.
> I wonder if they actually were following "Aviate, Navigate." end of checklist.
“Communicate” means communication with air traffic control
They did that.
Communication with the passengers is good, of course, but optional, if they have time
In that case the claim boils down to "they were doing important stuff the entire time" and I... just don't believe the important stuff lasted that long contiguously.
Where does your intuition for how long actions take in a cockpit come from?
I'm not a pilot, so i have no idea. But from watching vasaviation on youtube, it always seems to take like 5-10 minutes between when they first radio the control tower there is an emergency, then they go through their checklists and stabilize things, and then they're ready to talk to the tower for the next step. Now add more back and forth and the time to actually fly to get back to a regular path, and 15 minutes might even seem too short a period of time before you've finished resolving everything and can now kick back and tell the passengers the end result.
You should watch some pilot videos online, specifically large commercial aviation videos.
Pilots have a TON of checklists and procedures. If they're up in the air approaching cruising altitude and need to turn around (even in an emergency), it's a lot of work.
They need to assess the situation, inform ATC that they are returning, copy down heading information from ATC (they generally do not just 'start turning'), start working through checklists, start dumping fuel (planes are often too heavy to land well early on in a flight), get the approach and landing procedures for the airport they are returning to, keep talking to ATC and switch from regional/approach frequencies, all while adjusting settings and doing calculations. In an emergency, they also need to report on how many people are on board, fuel levels, what their plan is, etc... all while, you know, flying the plane and being extra alert for other traffic (both in sight, on instruments, and the other radio calls) since they are deviating from what's expected.
Plus, they often have no idea what's going on, they have only heard "there is a fire onboard, we think we have it under control" from the crew.
They aren't going to talk to the passengers in a gap unless there's a major need (like Sullenberger saying "This is the captain, brace for impact". He had already committed to the Hudson long before he said that. And note that that's the minimum communication that conveys the message, he didn't spend one second on that he didn't have to.)
There's always a long list of checklists and calculations to run though. It's rare for a plane with an emergency to land as soon as possible, they generally need a little extra time to finish such tasks.
Based on how many ATC recordings I've heard where an aircraft declares an emergency, diverts, then asks ATC for a holding pattern/delay vectors to set up the landing, I consider this plausible.
They need to find, read, understand and brief the approach charts, missed approach procedures, etc., configure that all in the onboard computer, go over a stack of checklists, etc.
Why do you feel that is weird? Keeping the passengers informed isn't really a priority in a situation like that. They told you when you needed to know.
I thought that even the cabin crew did not know what's burning. There's also the feeling of helplessness -- you know something is wrong but you are not told that something is wrong. The hysteria at the back of the plane could have been alleviated by telling that the situation is under control. When the plane was landing, I could see fire trucks, an ambulance, and police of some sort driving in parallel to the plane to rush in. I only found out about the reason from the news later.
You are helpless, the cabin crew know what’s going on but aren’t telling you, and the hysteria at the back of the plane won’t be alleviated by telling them there’s a fire in the cabin, you’re making an emergency landing and to prepare for an emergency response unit upon landing.
There’s nothing you can do other than stay in your seat and keep out of the way.
What? Keeping passengers informed is zero effort, a nice thing to do, and probably a good idea. Why would you not say "we are returning due to a battery fire. The fire has been contained but we must return because X y z" or whatever.
Because passengers panic, and that makes the job of the crew harder?
Telling them why they can smell smoke and not to worry about it will make them panic less.
[dead]
> Why would you not say "we are returning due to a battery fire. The fire has been contained but we must return because X y z" or whatever.
Because as soon as you mention "fire" you'll get a bunch of dumb fucks panicking themselves so hard they're going to behave completely irrationally (like attempting to rip open the emergency doors which IS possible at low enough altitudes) - or manage to induce legitimate medical problems. Heart attack for the older folks, dyspnea up to actually going unconscious from hyperventilation for the younger folks.
- "panicking themselves so hard they're going to behave completely irrationally (like attempting to rip open the emergency doors which IS possible at low enough altitudes)"
The Denver airport fire this month was an object lesson. A panicking mob apparently ignored instructions and went out the wrong emergency exit door, onto the airplane wing, where they stood over the flaming jet-fuel smoke with no way down.
(The other doors had slides).
Yeah. Right there on the safety card--note whether there's fire outside an exit before using it.
Ugh yeah that's why you tell them it's been put out.
Bold of you to assume they'll continue to listen after the keyword "fire". In the worst case, they'll actively doubt you and, worse, start doing so in a very public way ("they're just claiming the fire is out").
And yes this shit has happened in the past. Panicked people are uncontrollable and in a critical situation, priority #1 is to avoid panic to rise at all costs because panicked people can turn a critical situation into outright disaster.
"Wait, did they just say batteries can start fires?"
Yeah, I can like individuals, but not crowds.
Crowds can do dumb shit in a self reinforcing loop.
Just curious, were they able to purge or scrub the smoke from the cabin? Seems like a battery fire in a closed space like that would be a lung hazard.
Airliners have touted in the pandemic that planes have HEPA filtration which remove 99.95+% of particles in the air, which includes smoke particles.
Battery fires will also produce other bad stuff in the air, but it's still a minor consideration compared to a fire which can bring down the plane.
The issue is how quickly they cycle the full cabin air volume.
What airline was it?
I've never been to the US but seen a lot of random videos and pilots in the US sound kind of unprofessional. They don't seem to communicate clearly and use very casual language. For instance I saw a video recently where the pilot refused a plane because he "wasn't feeling it" or something.
In that particular instance, that pilot also mentioned there were issues with engine oil pressure, IIRC, and the fuel filter was scheduled to be replaced after the long haul flight over water. Those concerning data points were what led to him not “feeling it.” That type of casual language, IMO, makes it easier for people to empathize with the conclusion based on hard facts.
Still I've never heard a pilot communicate like that. On the European airlines I've flown on the pilot would concisely and professionally explain the situation and then make a formal apology.
The language of the corporate meeting room in America is also a lot more casual than in Europe. It has zero bearing on actual professionalism (defined, “ the competence or skill expected of a professional”) given the results of American corporations (or the strong safety record of US pilots). So, while I can literally understand your point, I can’t see why it’s material to anything.
This probably happens on American airlines, but it won't make the news so you won't know about it unless you were on the plane.
OK, Karen
The pilot in command can refuse an aircraft because of unresolved mechanical or technical issues, and sometimes issues that for example are fine on a clear calm day can just not be in weather. Remember that the pilots themselves are responsible for the safety of the aircraft and all passengers for the duration of the flight, so it's up to their judgement to make sure that a flight is safe.
But a fire on a plane is pretty much the most dangerous event you can have on a flight. Especially lithium battery fires since aircraft don't have the right extinguisher for them, and staff are generally trained to quarantine the fire just long enough so it can be taken care of on the ground.
Seems like a “lithium fire box” or perhaps fireproof bag capable of containing lithium fires and smothering them would become standard on planes. Most personal electronics are fairly small as well.
The official training video by the FAA outlines that crew should extinguish the fire with onboard equipment and keep it cool with water to prevent it from thermal runaway again. In one outline, FAA doesn't endorse putting it in a bag or touching it any further than it needs to be, and another in response to commercial "FAA approved" products for lithium battery fires, does not endorse nor discourage using such products.
You can't smother a lithium battery fire because it's not using atmospheric oxygen in the first place. The only options are containment or cooling.
If the pilot isn't feeling the plane, I don't want to be on it either, so I'm not sure that's an "unprofessional" issue.
No, that's a standard part of flying safety. If you are not in the right mental state to fly you shouldn't, and especially not if the lives of hundreds of people depend on you.
That isn't the point I was making. Read again.
That video was noteworthy because it was such unusual phrasing.
It was United.
> After checks by the maintenance teams, the device was found
Do we know where the device was found?
Once you know about something you have to "do something" even if that something is stupid.
There is definitely truth to that. Example: Post 9/11 security theatre.
It's crazy to think that anyone could, at no cost to themselves, cause a large commercial plane to be turned around and wipe out maybe $1 million dollars of value from the economy; if you count fuel costs, staff costs, lost hours of hundreds of passengers.
While the point is valid, I can't help but think about "A hacker in a restaurant", english version found here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/hacker-restaurant-alexander-s... (it's not mine and I'm in no way affiliated with the owner/author of the page).
So weird to me that this blog post is on linkedin and clicking your link opened the linkedin app on my phone
Airlines have hugely benefited from moving travelers from paper tickets to the use of their phones, where everything is done in the airline's app. Even if a few flights get turned around now and then, that seems trivial compared to the benefits:
- No need to print/distribute physical tickets
- Check-ins via the app reduces the need for ground personnel
- They can push inflight menus, shopping items, promotions etc.
- Flight updates and other notifications can get pushed to your device
- Integration of loyalty systems like airmiles
- They get to track various user behaviors
Passengers have benefited as well. Traditional tickets weren’t quite like cash but they were a big hassle to replace if lost.
Paper tickets, yes. Paper boarding passes, no. Replacing a paper boarding pass has been easy since airlines switched to an electronic ticketing system where the actual ticket is an entry in the airline's database.
The person I was responding to was talking about tickets. I will print a paper boarding pass if I'm at home and I can print it easily when I check in in advance but I just do it at the airport if it's not convenient. (I don't like making myself more dependent on my phone than I need to be.)
That comment introduces some confusion with "moving travelers from paper tickets to the use of their phones" before giving a mixed list of benefits of e-tickets and mobile boarding passes.
E-tickets were introduced in the 1990s, and essentially all airlines were using them by 2008. They don't have anything to do with phones. Mobile boarding passes are a more recent development.
It is the only sane way to handle things like this and I think it is the reason air travel is so secure that most regulations and practices make sense.
You want the crew to be fully in charge of security. If they think the plane should turn around, it turns around. In the long term it is way cheaper to eat those costs then to start a whole industry about litigation for events like these, probably causing everyone to buy additional insurance etc.
You definitely don't want to give any incentive to anyone to "overlook" possible problems.
Wipe out 1 million dollars from the economy?? Au contraire mon frere they just added 1 million dollars to GDP!
This sort of thing happens all the time, just less obviously. For example in my city it's not unusual to hear that a major tram line is stopped during the morning commute due to a car driver blocking it inconsiderately or colliding.
Once amortized against successful journeys the overall cost per passenger isn't significant. When it is, that's when we start seeing liability moved to the instigator.
This train of reasoning goes to some very sick places very quickly. A more reasonable version of this is "it's crazy to think that anyone could be put in a position to etc etc". I.e. we live in a big complicated world - if an individual drops the production table, almost certainly something else was wrong besides that person making a mistake.
I don't think the parent comment is saying that this passenger is at fault, just that there is a lot of potential for abuse.
"upgrade me to business class or I won't remember where my phone is as we'll have to go back"
I was thinking more in the direction of adversary government/groups getting a few people to "lose" their phones.
I strongly advise buying and always using a "phone lanyard" to tether your phone to your belt loop. A well-working example is ASIN B07ZSDFY85. With it, your phone won't get lost or get left behind. Even if the risk of losing the phone is just once in ten years, it still is worth it. If it drops with the tether, you can just lift the tether cable to get it back. If you're tall, you may need two, or something longer. Note that the tether works only with a compatible phone case to hold it in place.
I would lose 5 phones before I wore that embarrassing thing
Why is it embarrassing? That's entirely in your mind. It is objectively quite neutral. It's not about the cost of the phone... it's about the massive effort that goes into setting up a new phone, literally multiple weeks of effort. Also, life can be disrupted a fair bit without a phone. There is also some data loss of apps that haven't fully been backed up. If your phone use is light and ordinary, you don't need it.
I would find a lanyard attached to my belt or around my neck awkward I think. I do use a wrist lanyard through--not som much for this purpose but because I worry that I'll be taking a photo from a bridge and someone will jostle me or I'll otherwise drop the phone in some particularly inconvenient location.
I keep it just as I keep my keychain, hooked in a belt loop. I guess you will understand only after you have forgotten your phone somewhere. When you do, I hope you get it back.
why don't we throw in a belt pouch as well??
Lanyard to your *belt*?
I hike, a phone falling is a realistic issue. I use a lanyard around my neck, though, not to my belt. A lanyard long enough to reach from your belt to use is likely to let it hit the ground. I've had it slip out a few times and be caught by the lanyard--without hitting the ground.
Bluetooth from a smartwatch or BLE locator beacon in your keys/wallet/bag works almost as well and is way more convenient.
I have a smartwatch, but it won't help at all when leaving your phone in an Uber/Lyft which takes off. You will then be left with the awareness of having just left your phone rather than actually your phone.
From Apple Support — https://support.apple.com/en-us/101593
>With your Apple Watch, in the Find My app, or on the web at iCloud.com/find, you can play a sound to help find your device if it's nearby or find it on a map.
It can be tracked but that is entirely different from not losing it in the first place, which is what a lanyard does. Imagine leaving it on a public bus... good luck ever getting that back.
When I left my wallet on Boston’s subway, I was able to retrieve it the next day with its contents intact. I was pleasantly shocked.
I recommend a good pocket protector to accompany the phone lanyard. Here’s a nice leather option. B08S6KMCGM
Well I thought your reply was both amusing and technically relevant...
I'd never be caught dead with that lanyard haha so it's amusing to see it recommended, though I don't blame others for using one!
I've not considered it, but with the rise of phones and e-ink and so on, I assume pocket protectors are even less common than they were prior?
Here's my countervailing advice for keeping your phone safe: don't use a case or any protection at all. This trains you to take care of it.
This little experiment lasted for about 6 weeks for me before I broke front and back glass and cracked the camera lens in one go on a cement floor. I’ll take the $6 rubber case now and save me some grief.
I think this is akin to the "wearing a seatbelt makes me drive more dangerously" argument. (I also don't use a case, but mainly because I don't like the extra bulk and don't mind dinging my phone up a bit, not because I think I'll take better care of it).
Do you also have a safety spike [1] installed in your car?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Tullock#Tullock's_spike
I use this method and have only broken one phone in ten years because of it...
I don't use this method and have broken zero phones in ten years because of it.
Each phone gets a 9h glass screen protector and thin TPU case, each about $10 on Amazon. I crack the screen protector maybe once every 8 months and there is usually three screen protectors in the pack I bought, so I just replace the cheap screen protector.
When I drop the phone, I try to soften the impact with my shoe.
That doesn’t work for current gen iPhones, whose screens you can scratch seemingly with pocket mint.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZzZatxb9KQ
One thing I do appreciate about Apple is their new ceramic shield material on the 6.1-inch screen. It actually does appear to be more scratch-resistant than other smartphones. Working our way up through the Mohs scale of hardness, usually I can feel the level-6 pick grab the glass and start scratching, but with this latest generation of ceramic shield, it still feels pretty smooth—even with that sharp level-6 pick. The marks are still appearing, but they're so faint and subtle that I almost can't say "scratches at a level-6, with deeper grooves at a level-7" anymore. Almost.
You can get more scratch-resistant screen protectors, but as far as the builtin glass I don't think Apple is falling behind anywhere.
I carry a work iPhone 15 Pro and a personal 16 Pro, actually my second, I had a warranty replacement when faceid stopped working. It scratches easily, especially on the edges. The glass is too hard.
The 15 is pristine. And I treat it worse! I typically carry iPhones naked and the only mishap was I dropped two iPhone 6 because that thing was like a stick of butter.
That's a surprising difference in durability between the 15 Pro and your 16 Pros! Interesting about the edges scratching so easily
> The glass is too hard.
Being too hard should make it easier to shatter but harder to scratch, shouldn't it?
Is the risk of a phone overheating and exploding the battery less if the owner knows where it is?
Yes, because if you know where it is, you likely also know it's not wedged into a seat hinge getting crushed as you attempt to recline.
It's not about the risk of it going up, but in whether it will be promptly noted and contained if it does go up.
Overheating? Maybe. Preventing explosion? Absolutely.
I think the fear is that the user's phone is in the checked luggage.
At least in the USA, cell phones are allowed checked luggage. However, they are supposed to be powered of and "protected up prevent unintentional activation or damage".
I realize this was an Air France flight, but I suspect the checked rules are nearly the same.
Because lithium batteries that could now be in the luggage compartment.
The world needs a new rating like IPX rating for battery fire hazard.
How did they know the phone was lost?
Presumably a passenger came to them and asked for help extracting their phone from a crevice in a seat.
If this keeps happening, providing an on-board toolkit and cross-training flight attendants in proper seat disassembly and reassembly could well pay off.
Insurance companies and legal departments will nip that idea in the bud.
Turkish Airlines did exactly that (partially disassemble the seat) on a flight I've been on a little while ago. (Someone lost their phone in a business class seat.)
The risks seem to be lower than the ones associated with landing with a device stuck somewhere.
What I don't understand is why they don't construct the seats for less chances of things getting lost in them. Some seats have huge holes to lose things in…
Huge holes are a lower risk since objects simply pass through
Except these holes open into the seat electromechanics, where moving the seat can easily catch and crush a phone…
(Business class seats can adjust themselves with a person sitting in them, quite sure that's enough force to 'fold' a phone)
Legal departments advise management, management decides.
In this case, if the legal department paints pictures of doom, and the ops department paints pictures of cost savings, it's up in the air (pun intended) which management will pick.
A competent legal department will provide a realistic assessment of risk to go into this decision making process, not just obstruct everything.
Now we're losing international flights to lost phones? Sodium batteries can't come soon enough.
I can't blame them, an in-air cabin fire is no joke. This[1] happened on the ground and destroyed the plane. Another very recent one[2] was in the air and thankfully extinguished. But I don't see sodium batteries in portable devices any time soon: too bulky for the capacity. LFP, perhaps.
[1] https://avherald.com/h?article=523644ed&opt=0
[2] https://avherald.com/h?article=525739ed&opt=0
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I can imagine, this is a fairly regular exchange here in America.