Flight attendants on a Hong Kong Airlines flight from the Chinese city of Hangzhou on Thursday rushed to put out a fire that erupted in an overhead locker using anything at their disposal, including bottles of water and even cartons of juice.
The cause of the fire is yet to be fully established, although the likely culprit is an overheating power bank inside a passenger’s hand rucksack, which also caught fire in the frightening incident.
In a statement, a spokesperson for Hong Kong Airlines confirmed that its flight attendants had successfully extinguished a blaze onboard Flight HX115, an Airbus A320 aircraft, which departed Hangzhou at around 1 pm on March 20, bound for Hong Kong.
Eyewitnesses onboard the flight captured mobile phone footage of flight attendants dousing the overhead locker and a bag inside with various liquids, including multiple bottles of water, as well as several cartons of juice.
The footage clearly showed where the fire had charred around the sides of overhead locker before it was successfully contained by the flight crew.
Fearing the worst, the pilots decided to divert the aircraft to Fuzhou in China’s Fujian province, approximately 1,500 km south of Beijing.
In recent weeks, a number of major international airlines have amended their so-called ‘Dangerous Goods’ policies to specifically deal with the increasing threat posed by passengers bringing portable power banks onboard with them.
The decision to ban passengers from either using power banks inflight or prohibiting them from being placed in overhead lockers was prompted by an incident onboard an Air Busan aircraft in South Korea, which was destroyed in a fiery blaze when a power bank caught fire in an overhead locker in January.
South Korean airlines have banned passengers from placing power banks in overhead lockers so that passengers can monitor their condition throughout the flight and react immediately should they start to overheat.
From next month, Singapore Airlines will ban passengers from charging their devices with a portable power bank or charging the power bank via onboard plug points and USBs.
On Thursday, Malaysia Airlines also announced that it would prohibit passengers from either storing power banks in overhead lockers, using them to charge their own devices, or charging power banks via onboard power sources – the ban is set to come into effect on April 1.
Airlines have also been at pains to point out that potable power banks and any other device containing a lithium battery should not be placed in checked-in luggage. If the device were to overheat in the cargo hold, any subsequent fire would be incredibly difficult to extinguish and could result in devastating consequences.
