An exploding battery pack or laptop computer that overheated could be the cause of the fire that erupted on an Air Busan Airbus A321 airplane at Gimhae International Airport in Busan, South Korea, on Tuesday night, destroying the plane and resulting in seven people being injured.
Dramatic eyewitness videos taken by passengers and airport staff during the evacuation of Air Busan flight BX391 on January 28 revealed how quickly flames engulfed the single-aisle aircraft as it was preparing for departure for Hong Kong.
The passengers had just boarded the plane at around 10:15 pm on Tuesday when some witnesses say they heard crackling sounds coming from an overhead locker at the rear of the plane. A short time later, smoke started to pour out into the cabin.
The pilots quickly initiated an evacuation via emergency slides, with all 176 people on board, including seven crew members, successfully escaping the burning plane. Three passengers, however, sustained minor injuries during the evacuation, and four crew members were treated for smoke inhalation.
South Korea’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport says it is working to set up an accident committee to get to the bottom of what occurred on the Air Busan plane.
Although investigators are not yet ruling out the possibility of terrorism, there is currently no evidence to suggest that this is the case, and it is believed to be an unlikely explanation for the fire.
Instead, investigators are understood to be concentrating on the theory that a lithium battery carried onboard the plane by a passenger could be the cause of the fire.
Lithium-ion batteries, which not only power consumer portable electronics like smartphones, laptops, and tablets but are also carried onboard as portable chargers, have become a significant concern for airlines who fear a scenario exactly like what occurred on Tuesday night.
In the last few years, we’ve seen an increasing number of lithium battery fires aboard planes. One of the biggest concerns with a lithium battery fire is that it can be complicated to extinguish due to a process called ‘thermal runaway’.
To prevent the risk of thermal runaway, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has urged passengers to avoid charging their devices full before boarding a plane.
“If you know that you are bringing a device that you won’t be using during your trip, it’s actually best to have it at a lower battery level,” explained Robert Ochs, Manager of the Fire Safety Branch at the FAA’s William J. Hughes Technical Center.
“So, if it’s at 30%, say, or lower, it’s less likely to undergo thermal runaway, and the reaction would be less severe.”
To extinguish a lithium battery fire inflight, flight attendants have several tools at their disposal, including special fire containment bags that remove the supply of oxygen and, therefore, starve the fire.
Another method, however, is simply to submerge the device in water, thereby cooling it to a level that eventually stops the thermal runaway.
In any case, safety experts urge passengers only to pack devices with a lithium battery in their carry-on luggage because there is no easy way to fight a fire if it erupts in the cargo hold.
Bags DO NOT work. You cannot suffocate these fires. They create their own oxygen which is how they can continue to propagate. The only way to prevent future propagation is through cooling the device. Lithium Fire Guard is the only device that you can encapsulate the PED and fully submerge it in water to prevent future propagation. The bags are extremely dangerous and not the solution. Lithiumfireguard.com