[HN Gopher] Rising number of lithium battery incidents on airpla...
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Rising number of lithium battery incidents on airplanes worry crew
Author : thunderbong
Score : 56 points
Date : 2023-05-14 17:57 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cbsnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cbsnews.com)
| ajb wrote:
| My house is old enough to have (currently redundant) fireplaces.
| Reading stories like this, I wonder if it would be worth
| converting them into flameproof storage for battery powered
| devices.
| jstarfish wrote:
| Probably not.
|
| You'd have to leave the flue open (there goes heating/cooling)
| and regularly pay to clean it to make sure nothing nested
| inside or it won't vent. They don't smother either, so airtight
| boxes are out too.
|
| Focus on fire suppression/escape strategy. The one that burns
| your house down is going to be some freebie gadget someone else
| lost in your couch, that you didn't know about to account for.
| bombcar wrote:
| You can buy "burn cabinets" designed for this but I wonder if a
| fire safe would work.
|
| If it can keep fire out, can it keep fire in?
| westurner wrote:
| "Researchers craft a fully edible battery" (2023)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35885696
| Animats wrote:
| The Boeing 787 had problems with the aircraft's own lithium
| batteries going into thermal runaway and catching fire.[1]
| Fortunately, on the ground at an airport. When it happened a
| second time, all 787s were grounded for months.
|
| I suspect that once there's a better battery technology, maybe
| lighter lithium-iron-phosphate or a noncombustible solid battery,
| the current lithium ion technology will be prohibited on
| aircraft.
|
| [1]
| https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/boeing-787-dreamliner...
| rectang wrote:
| In 2010, UPS Flight 6 in Dubai was brought down by a fire that
| started in a pallet of Lithium Ion batteries.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UPS_Airlines_Flight_6
|
| The article claims that there's one incident per week for these
| passenger-owned device fires on commercial flights. When they
| happen in the cabin it's spectacular and terrifying but the
| bigger worry is when a fire smolders out of sight.
| miramba wrote:
| Sounds disturbing, but when I think about the thousands of
| flights, 100000s of passengers, almost all with at least 1 LiIon
| device...a lot more incidents should have happened at this point.
|
| Semi-related story: I started a flight from a not-1st world
| country to another not-1st in the times when all cell phones had
| to be switched off. When we approached landing, the cellphones
| got contact and started buzzing and ringing with incoming
| messages. Apparently a lot of people had ignored the order to
| turn off the phone. I realized that in my 1st world, people
| follow those orders, in other countries they just don't. If cell
| phones posed a danger to flight safety, somewhere a plane should
| have crashed already. Similar to here.
| m348e912 wrote:
| I don't want this discussion to devolve into an FAA radio
| interference flame war but the risk from general consumer
| electronic/mobile devices on airplanes has been minimal and
| most instruments are well shielded against RF interference.
|
| I would suspect most seasoned and knowledgeable pilots don't
| worry too much about Mr Businessman in first class on his
| iPhone or Tablet using 5G.
|
| On the other hand I have seen more than one flight attendant
| absolutely lose their marbles because someone was texting
| during announcements or while taxiing.
|
| Aside from the fact that someone talking on their phone during
| a flight would be terribly annoying, the biggest issue with
| active phones on airplanes was how it messed with ground cell
| towers. There was fair amount of handoff the towers had to do
| with traveling passengers at 30,000 feet. At least in the
| earlier days it was problematic to deal with. I'd love a
| wireless communications engineer to chime in on that part.
| WheatMillington wrote:
| What is your proposition here? That these incidents aren't
| actually occurring as reported, or that in air fires just
| aren't a big deal? Eventually such a fire will end in a
| disaster, we're really just playing with probability. In
| aviation a lot of investment is made in mitigating much less
| likely problems, but we seem to be happy to accept the
| proliferation of potentially dangerous devices I'm not saying
| it's right or wrong, but it is interesting.
| ncann wrote:
| Obligatory XKCD https://xkcd.com/651/
| lisasays wrote:
| "I get what you're saying about seat belts. But when I think
| about all the hours I've driven, the thousands upon thousands
| of miles ... something should have happened by this point."
|
| _If cell phones posed a danger to flight safety, somewhere a
| plane should have crashed already. Similar to here._
|
| The logic here seems to be: "Factor X turned out to be a false
| alarm. Therefore this new factor Y you're talking about --
| completely unrelated to X -- well, it's probably a false alarm
| as well."
| croutonwagon wrote:
| I did an international flight to a country that had spotty power
| and it was a 3+ week trip.
|
| So naturally I grabbed my kids firetablet 5000 mah battery packs
| (x2), my iPhone charger, personal and work laptop, and a couple
| sets of AirPods.
|
| Needless to say my backpack was heavy. One airline (Asiana)
| wanted to weigh my carryon and told me it was too heavy. I told
| them I had reservations checking lithium batteries to a non
| pressurized cabin. I offered to pay a fee but could t really just
| toss the laptops etc (the bulk of the weight).
|
| Eventually they let it slide because of the batteries but for a
| second I thought I was gonna be stuck in a terminal or be forced
| to Chuck a MacBook or something in the trash (and let be serious,
| the work machine goes first)
| doktorhladnjak wrote:
| The baggage compartments of modern jet aircraft are pressurized
| xwdv wrote:
| If a huge fire breaks out on a plain mid flight, you
| realistically have no chance of survival right? So instead of
| trying to survive only to get burned to death you should inhale
| as much fumes as possible to pass out and die quickly before you
| are burned?
| solfox wrote:
| It seems somewhat tragic to me that you believe "inhaling as
| much fumes as possible" would even be an option. Human
| psychology doesn't really work like that.
| xwdv wrote:
| The logic of inhaling fumes is not much farther removed from
| the logic of jumping out of a burning skyscraper. Anything to
| avoid burning to death.
| bombcar wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloha_Airlines_Flight_243 Ended
| with one fatality.
|
| Stay with the plane.
| jMyles wrote:
| Not at all. Fires are survivable, and the vast majority of
| aviation fires have ended without total airframe loss.
|
| Remember: everybody in a small captive space is a firefighter.
| And the chief firefighters are the people who we call "flight
| attendants". Their man job is to prevent the scenario you
| describe; they are nice enough to serve us drinks when that job
| is not required of them.
|
| Flight attendants and air traffic controllers have saved many,
| many lives in the past century and are barely recognized for
| it.
| IndySun wrote:
| If your comment was aimed on a 'Black Mirror' irony level, you
| need to hone your delivery. Be pithier.
| olivermarks wrote:
| We've come full circle as a society. Pressurized steam used to
| power everything, created by burning coal and wood. Then we went
| to oil based fuels for transportation and grid electricity and
| natural gas for most other energy needs. Now we are back to
| pressurized battery electricity created by coal, gas, hydro.
|
| Thermal runaway issues will increase as more lithium devices
| malfunction and age, as the endless electric scooter and other
| battery fires demonstrate.
|
| https://youtu.be/4IrN9MTj5YI The 1948 Steam Locomotive Boiler
| Explosion Outside of Chillicothe, Ohio
| akiselev wrote:
| _> A CBS News Investigation has discovered similar incidents have
| been happening much more frequently in the skies over the United
| States. The FAA verifies the number of lithium-Ion battery fires
| jumped more 42% [sic] in the last five years._
|
| I just checked several estimates of iPhone/iPad sales and number
| of Android users using a cursory Google search.
|
| Guess what? The increase in the number of fires correlates with
| growth in the number of electronic devices sold. CBSNews at 11.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| > Guess what? The increase in the number of fires correlates
| with growth in the number of electronic devices sold.
|
| That would be odd. Surely a huge number of the devices sold
| replace prior devices. More interesting would be the number of
| phones on planes and I would assume that this is mostly flat at
| this point.
| asdff wrote:
| While cellphones might have plateued, what hasn't I'd imagine
| are travel batteries. People get terrible ones from amazon or
| for free from places with a random corporate logo printed on
| the side. It's probably a lot of junk that's not nearly as
| scrutinized as a smartphone with qc. With each year more of
| these end up being gifted by friends and relatives as a cheap
| and useful gift and put into circulation.
| quitit wrote:
| Sure smartphones may have plateaued, but that doesn't mean
| they quality of them is stable either. Low cost foreign
| brands are popular because they're now good enough for many
| consumers.
|
| But on your point: I have received 3 of the travel
| batteries you've described as promotional/corporate gifts.
| They're all junk, and their housing is weak. While I've
| never used any of them, it wouldn't be such a stretch for
| me to charge one up as a "back up" battery when I go
| travelling. (Obviously now I won't.)
| ben0x539 wrote:
| Maybe you have the causation the wrong way around--about
| every time there is a lithium battery fire on a plane,
| someone has to buy a new phone, after all.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| Presumably, the base sales would be for replacement. You
| don't need increasing sales to handle replacement rate. I'd
| expect ~40% more device sales roughly means 40% more devices
| on planes, which means ~40% more device incidents on planes.
|
| Though, that's not to say it's not worrying, just that it's
| not exactly a surprising increase.
| akiselev wrote:
| According to [1] the growth in smart phone market penetration
| was closer to 15-20% than 40% but definitely non-negligible
| over that time period. I assume smartphones are significantly
| likelier to have a battery accident than dumb cellphones due
| to the higher power requirements. On the other hand, iPads
| are definitely not that wide spread - that number is also far
| more strongly correlated.
|
| I'll admit I should have been more precise - I actually
| checked stats for several other types of devices. Given all
| the new wireless headphones like Airpods, all the growth in
| vape usage (especially cannabis vapes, which became legal and
| a TSA nothingburger in many states around that time), and so
| on, I think the burden of proof is on showing that the
| increase in fire exceeds the growth in number of devices.
| Based on personal experience, most vapes are _very_ easy to
| overheat because the on button sticks out on many devices and
| it 's the kind of thing a smoker would have in carry on.
|
| Edit: Just realized I got a separate smart phone for work in
| that time period.
|
| [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/mobile/
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| A lot of cheap gadgets from a certain large Asian country
| of dubious quality. E.g. a portable battery obtained from
| Amazon. It will be a no-name brand and may or may not meet
| the certifications it actually has printed on its label.
|
| We've basically ceded the gadget market to these producers,
| most of us don't have the money to buy a genuine Apple
| magsafe battery (or if we do, we feel like it isn't worth
| it).
| MilStdJunkie wrote:
| Could that curve also be inversely related to the cost curve
| for lithium devices in general over the same period? Consumer
| technology drives cost of X down, X is now decent option for
| high-performance technology Y, sometimes tech X used in Y
| causes failures.
|
| This, here, if I had to guess, is probably the driver of
| avionics-related lithium incidents: the avx batteries share an
| awful lot of the supply chain with consumer batteries, and
| these batteries have an increasing amount of software way way
| way down in the assembly where auditors and mx engineers might
| not see. That software might be driving the cells within a
| particular environment / load range, and when it gets dinged
| outside of that range, unpredictable things happen.
|
| This is very very very very similar to root cause for an
| incident investigation I was party to. Military rotorcraft near
| "hot and high" operation limitations. Many other things were
| suspected because no one wanted it to be the lithium, but sure
| 'nuff, the microcontrollers deep down in their little battery
| brains were not doing what they needed to do, and didn't plug
| into the bus of the FMS/FMC's BMS (flight management computer's
| battery management subsystem)
| hospitalhusband wrote:
| Some folks in front of me had a mifi hotspot light on fire at the
| airport while in line to board. I saw the smoke and thought they
| were trying to get one last vape in, and told them it was bold of
| them. They said they didn't vape, after which I said their
| backpack was smoking. Gate lady made them throw it in the
| (blastproof, I guess) trash can. They eventually got to board but
| had to toss the backpack.
|
| That said they got to keep the contents. They sat across from us
| where we got to breathe in residual lithium smoke the whole
| flight, and allegiant still wanted to charge us for water.
| miles wrote:
| > allegiant still wanted to charge us for water.
|
| I'd be surprised if they didn't have to charge for water with
| flights from Memphis to Vegas for $38[0] and Cincinnati to Fort
| Myers for $44[1].
|
| [0] https://www.allegiantair.com/low-cost-las-vegas-flights
|
| [1] https://www.allegiantair.com/deals
| techsupporter wrote:
| The behavior of ultra low cost airlines is often inexcusable,
| but understandable, and why I don't fly them. Their employees
| are usually not allowed to make "good reason" exceptions
| because exceptions are nebulous and passengers may argue why
| the next time isn't a "good reason" and airlines want that
| money. It's like a flying cruise ship; the fare gets you a
| chair and nothing else because the everything else is where
| the profit comes from.
|
| (This business model is why we are seeing a rise in junk fees
| and "surcharges". Airlines and cable companies and hotels got
| away with it for so long with no major pushback that everyone
| else feels emboldened in light of this economic slowdown.)
| grepfru_it wrote:
| I watched someone pretend to fall asleep after getting
| their bottle of water. Then pretended to be asleep until
| they landed. They got off the plan with a free bottle of
| water.
| asdff wrote:
| What airline? Most will just bill to the card used to buy
| the ticket.
| aaomidi wrote:
| That's not really an authorized transaction
| poo-yie wrote:
| Good grief! Sad when someone needs to play games for a
| bottle of water.
| zamadatix wrote:
| The article made it click for me why they seem to care so much
| about you damaging your electronics lost in the seats.
|
| Is there something about air travel that makes these batteries go
| or is it just a relatively uncommon thing that creates a common
| problem given the number of flights?
| IndySun wrote:
| It's more to do with sheer number of things using Lithium in
| their power supply that's upping the numbers. Recently Vapes,
| as well as every single passenger carrying one. The odds have
| become difficult to manage - so says my local long-haul pilot -
| and a thermal runaway is not easy to deal with at oxygen-rich
| height.
|
| https://www.cross-safety.org/uk/safety-information/cross-saf...
| bombcar wrote:
| Moving the seat whilst something is stuck can cause it to
| puncture the battery - bad!
|
| Also, a seat that can't get out of recline can ground the whole
| airliner, too.
| VygmraMGVl wrote:
| You're in an enclosed tube with lots of people, so fire is a
| lot worse.
|
| Most lithium ion battery fires in cabins are from loose vape
| batteries, probably shorting on keys or change.
|
| Some are from crushing pouch cells in tablets or phones,
| sometimes by seats.
|
| Besides that, there isn't anything about planes that is causing
| these fires.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| I would imagine that the proliferation of _cheap_ devices
| using lithium batteries also contributes to the issue
| somewhat. While anything with a lithium-ion battery is
| susceptible (as seen with the exploding Samsung Note
| debacle), bargain bin electronics are almost certainly not
| selecting batteries to as high of a standard as something
| with better profit margins, like an ultrabook or flagship
| phone.
|
| Cheap chargers also likely contribute. There's limits to how
| much charger misbehavior even the best batteries can tolerate
| and some of the charger bricks sold on Amazon, in gas
| stations, etc are horrifyingly bad.
| Throw73849 wrote:
| Yes, cheap devices are real problem. China has strict rules
| for transporting batteries that are actually enforced.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Also no lighters on plane, because they know in practice
| they will be used in lavatories. They will find a
| lighter, or even just a spring from a lighter that fell
| apart a long time ago. Beijing airport security is quite
| impressive actually. They probably won't notice the knife
| you accidentally left your bag, however.
| ziml77 wrote:
| There really need to be rules in place to prevent these
| ticking time bombs that are cheap devices with 0 safety
| considerations or QA from being brought onto planes.
| rsync wrote:
| I'm surprised that after all of these years commercial airliners
| don't have jettison tubes/boxes/compartments ...
|
| A one-way, pressure (and possibly mechanical) airlock (or
| sphincter ?) that you can force a small item out of. This feature
| would have been useful even prior to mobile phones and batteries.
| It is my understanding that jet liners dump fuel anytime it is
| expedient to[1] so this is hardly the worst outcome in terms of
| pollution and has, essentially, zero cost over a body of water.
|
| Related:
|
| I am unsure whether a jet liner can descend to a breathable
| altitude (say, 10000 feet) and feed "fresh", or ambient, air into
| the plane. That seems like a nice redundancy to have and I wonder
| how realistic it would be to implement ...
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_dumping
| reisse wrote:
| Jet liners do not need to descend to feed ambient air into the
| plane. Cabin pressurization is done by feeding compressed air
| from the engine to air conditioner and then to cabin. So in
| theory yes, this is possible.
|
| However in case of fire, actively feeding fresh air may make
| things worse by providing more oxygen to burn.
| DerekL wrote:
| Airliners are always cycling in fresh air, no matter the
| altitude.
| chha wrote:
| > I am unsure whether a jet liner can descend to a breathable
| altitude (say, 10000 feet) and feed "fresh", or ambient, air
| into the plane. That seems like a nice redundancy to have and I
| wonder how realistic it would be to implement ...
|
| This is already in place, and has been since planes began going
| high enough to require pressurized cabins. The engines
| basically suck in lots of air which is compressed, resulting in
| a higher temperature. Most of this goes into the combustion,
| but some of it goes into other applications, such as the
| environmental systems supplying the cabin with air.
|
| It doesn't have the same effect as opening all the windows in a
| car, but considering the outside temperature[1] that might not
| be such a bad thing.
|
| [1] - https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/standard-atmosphere-
| d_604...
| rektide wrote:
| Fun fact, the f35 jet fighter has kept needing more and more
| bleed-air for thermal management, and it's putting more than
| expected wear & load on the engines.
|
| One of the next major upgrades is the P&W Engine Core Upgrade
| which replaces some of the inner engine, and one of the main
| features is a greatly increased thermal management capability
| for the engine, since it has so much more bleed air demand
| than originally expected. I think maybe more bleed air too?
| This after GE's proposed XA100 got turned down, which would
| have been even more of a beast (albeit not fit in the Marines
| stol jet).
| sojournerc wrote:
| In many emergencies pilots will conduct an "emergency descent"
| down to 10000 as part of the checklist (or memory item). It is
| a dive that you would never otherwise experience in a
| commercial jet.
| florbo wrote:
| I was on a flight where one of the pilots had a heart attack
| and got to experience weightlessness or close to it for a few
| seconds. Cool to think about what that felt like now but in
| moment.. not so much. Anyway, the pilot survived and the
| delay was surprisingly short given the circumstances.
| bombcar wrote:
| "This is your backup pilot speaking. Our captain has gone
| into cardiac arrest, but we will dive to 10,000 feet and
| give him a bit of the old spicy bra and have him right back
| up and you back on schedule in no time!"
| doktorhladnjak wrote:
| I had something like this happen once too.
|
| "Attention passengers, this is your captain speaking. I'm
| not feeling well. The first officer will be landing the
| plane as soon as possible."
|
| I was quite surprised how quickly they can safely and
| smoothly lane a plane when there's urgency. We were at the
| gate with paramedics waiting within 10-15 minutes from
| cruise altitude, and we still had to backtrack 100 miles or
| so to the airport.
|
| Overall delay was only about 2 hours which was mostly
| finding another pilot on short notice.
| photoGrant wrote:
| I've wondered how long it will take for them to put an emergency
| fireproof bag behind/under every seat. Surely it's worth the
| expense. Maybe they'll do something when it one day costs more in
| bad PR.
| [deleted]
| dinkblam wrote:
| > Surely it's worth the expense.
|
| you'd think the same about parachutes for everyone which could
| have rescued lives on some of the plane disasters.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Parachutes would barely save any lives.
|
| First, commercial air travel is incredibly safe.
|
| Second, parachuting requires extensive training which a
| negligible number of passengers have. It's not like you just
| jump out of a plane and it works automatically. Not to
| mention dealing with cold, oxygen deprivation, landing in the
| middle of the ocean, etc.
|
| Third, it's going to take at least a half hour for everyone
| to put parachutes on and jump out in an orderly fashion. How
| many aviation accidents have had a half hour of extra time
| where they already knew they would fatally crash?
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| You just invented https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cirrus_Airf
| rame_Parachute_Syst... even though i don't know how that
| would work on a commercial sized plane.
| ars wrote:
| People want to use them during the flight. A storage container
| wouldn't get used.
| Zetobal wrote:
| You can dump the burning phone into them. The gasses are
| probably worse than the initial fire.
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| A burning battery spewing out gases is going to quickly
| pressurize any sort of bag, isn't it?
| Zetobal wrote:
| They work really well just look at the bags for racing
| drone batteries on YouTube.
| genocidicbunny wrote:
| The last few times I've flown, I've noticed that with the other
| 'emergency' gear that the crew has stowed away in one of the
| overhead bins, they now have a fireproof bag in there too. So
| it's not quite at every seat, but they do seem to carry some on
| board.
|
| That does very little for situations where checked-in baggage
| has a lithium ion battery that ignites. They tell you to remove
| things like laptops and portable batteries from your checked in
| luggage, but I haven't heard disposable vapes mentioned, and
| those very often have lithium ion batteries too.
| ____jes wrote:
| While they're not under every seat, battery fire containment
| bags are already included in airlines' onboard emergency
| equipment, for flight attendants to use when needed.
|
| https://avsax.com/news/what-to-do-if-a-lithium-battery-catch...
| rektide wrote:
| And hopefully some tongs to move the devices into the bag
| while still molten.
|
| I'm perversely curious how bad the smoke issue is when this
| happens on planes. Honestly fucked up, but I actually don't
| think the fire is really that much of an issue, is almost no
| real threat. You bet your ass the plane, the seats, the
| carpet, the bulkheads are non-flammable. There's no real
| threat here, from what I can tell. Other than the harm of a
| major smoke release. I know there's a ton of air systems on
| planes... It's be so interesting to see a video of an extreme
| battery detonation test on a plane, to see how the smoke &
| air systems handle it.
| maccam912 wrote:
| Here's a question this group might know the answer to: are
| lithium battery and lithium-ion battery being used
| interchangeably by airlines? When they say "lithium" do I need to
| read that to also mean li-ion as well? Am I the dummy who thinks
| they mean two separate things and everyone else knows they mean
| the same thing?
| spiffytech wrote:
| They're the same thing. At this point no batteries are made
| purely from lithium (I remember seeing some research on that
| front).
|
| It's all lithium ion, lithium polymer, etc. In casual settings
| the terms get used interchangeably.
| burnte wrote:
| Yes, they're basically used interchangeable even though it's
| not 100% accurate. A LiIon cell versus a LiPoly spicy pillow
| may be different, but from this perspective they're the same.
| rektide wrote:
| Ideally we'd have smarter policies, I think? I can bring on 2x+
| RC hobbyist 100WHr lipo packs that scares even me, a lot.
|
| Amazing tech, super cheap. 4.5Ah 22.6V pack, converts down to
| usb-c ranges with absurd efficiency, 24v->120vac inverters are
| awesome. Packs are so cheap. High power ones can fully
| discharge in under a minute, which is 6.5kW output, absurd. But
| my heavens these things are just terrifying. I occasionally use
| two for a short-range electric skateboard & am shocked nothing
| has yet exploded or caught on fire. They're more durable than I
| expect but there is so much energy here so unprotected. And I
| as someone who watches the internal resistance change over
| time- I know for real these things age, a lot over time, and
| eventually some might well become quite unhappy monsters.
|
| But if I had lifepo4 packs, the only thing catching on fire
| would be whatever the pack was powering. Lifepo4 is amazing.
| Drive nails into it, set it on fire, whatever. Great cycle
| count too.
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