KLM B777-300 BKK-AMS Smoking Battery From Carry On Luggage
 

15 March 2015 on board a KLM B777-300 flight KL875 fly from Amsterdam (AMS) to Bangkok (BKK) batteries caught fire in the luggage of a passenger .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?featur...&v=6-GRktuAzxE

Could have been nasty....

Why does it seem that these things only catch fire on aircraft?


Is it something to do with the atmospheric pressure or something? I've never heard of anyone's laptop catching fire on a train or in a car, etc.


Sorry if being very stupid.

One hopes that the aircraft was so full that the passenger had to spend the remainder of the flight strapped into an economy seat in some extreme discomfort.

They don't. Just google " laptop catching fire". Seems to happen just about everywhere, but you don't hear about ones that don't occur in sealed aluminium tubes thousands of metres in the air.

KL 875 - drone catches fire in overhead locker!
 

Apparently a TV crew brought a drone on board KL875 as hand luggage. They put it in the overhead locker. Said drone subsequently caught fire.

Smoke from TV presenters' drone battery fills KLM aircraft - NL Times

Li expert, I see...

Wowzer - that could have been way worse.

Lucky it was in a carry on bag and not one that had been checked.

Li batteries are becoming an increasing safety issue for aviation. They are tested in 'simulated altitude conditions' as per below article,

# Regulations on Building a Lithium-ion Pack ? Battery University #

and i guess it would be very costly to be tested in 'real/actual conditions'. Are we happy with that ?

Not the first
http://www.pprune.org/australia-new-...ml#post8451751
... news item from that thread
Undeclared drone batteries sparked plane fire at Melbourne airport: report - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Li-ion batteries
 

Soon to be seen at check-in...battery sniffing dogs!

Will we get an answer as to why the battery started to smoke? I assume they had used the drone earlier with no problem.

I understand Li batts can be a problem but based on these types of reports why not reports of iPhones, Galaxy phones, iPads, cameras, etc smoking and burning all over the place?

A salutary video
 

Now this is a pretty extreme example of battery abuse however it certainly gave me a surprise.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-xPHopebiE

Drone batteries have to be powerfully and light. They are probably not certified for air transport. They can be dangerous.

iPhone and laptop batteries are much better designed and tested. I believe they will have some sort of IATA cert.

Drone batteries should never be allowed on a passenger or cargo aircraft.

A lot of us are now carrying much larger lithium polymer batteries as an FAA mandated backup to our Electronic Flight Bags (usually a tablet, e.g. an iPad). We are warned not to put the backup battery in checked luggage.

Fortunately, the FAA reassures us that damage to a lithium ion battery (they don't seem to yet distinguish the increasingly popular lithium polymer variants) is not dangerous:

Safe Travel with Batteries and Devices | Transportation Security Administration

A colleague who does a lot of remote control helo hobby work showed me a cellphone video of his intentional destruction of a 'worn out' 6000 mAH LiPo battery. The pyrotechnics were impressive. :eek:

Skridlov:
Darwin was close by during that exercise . . .

Or more correctly, google "thermal runaway".

Lithium batts in laptops, cameras, etc. are usually manufactured in plastic casings. The generic RC lipos used in RC aircraft and most lightweight platforms use lipos with the cells exposed. The cells are encased in something similar to a potatoe chip bag, or mylar. It's thin and easily punctured if a sharp wheel on a hand carry bag is smushed into it, for example. If punctured expect lots of smoke and likely sparks and flames. That's why the packing of lipos is so critically important, whether it's hundreds of pounds of lipos or just a single lipo pack strapped to a quadcopter.

Interesting that the latest Air France safety video includes mention of battery powered equipment and the caution that if folk lose an item like a mobile phone, not to adjust their seat to look for it but call for assistance.
This follows a fire caused by a mobile phone that got dameged by a seat being moved