The last place you want a fire is in the confined space of a passenger aircraft flying at 35,000ft
A lithium battery powering a mobile phone caused panic when it caught fire on a passenger aircraft
An AvSax lithium battery thermal mitigation bag which won the Queen’s Award for its innovation in the UK
One person was burned and another also injured after a lithium battery fire on board a passenger aircraft sparked panic and an emergency evacuation.
The fire in a mobile phone broke out while the aircraft with 108 passengers on board was still on the ground at Denver Airport in the USA, but the flight had been delayed by 30 minutes.
Smoke from the phone and burning seat quickly filled the aircraft and one passenger said: “It’s fortunate we had been delayed. If this has happened while we were in the air it would have been a catastrophe. During the evacuation the flight attendants were trying to keep everybody calm but it was pretty hard at that time.”
The Southwest Airlines flight was due to take off for William P Hobby Airport (named after the 27th governor of Texas in 1967) in Houston, Texas, when the cellphone caught fire around 7am on Friday, November 15.
The crew deployed an escape chute at the back of the plane while passengers near the front managed to get off using the door as the aircraft was still at the gate. One person was slightly hurt escaping down the chute.
The crew was able to douse a seat fire caused by the burning phone and its owner suffered minor burns to her hand.
When lithium batteries overheat or are damaged they go into thermal runaway and when this happens one cell in a battery overheats it can produce enough heat – up to 900°C (1652°F) – to cause adjacent cells to overheat.
The heat generated by chemical reactions inside the battery causes even more heat, leading to a continuous rise in temperature. This can result in the battery venting and releasing toxic flammable gases, exploding or catching fire and because they burn at such a high temperature they are very difficult to put out.
This is why many airline companies are now equipped with AvSax lithium battery thermal fire mitigation bags and there are now on board almost 17,000 aircraft globally and have been used in action dozens of times.
When they are deployed the aircraft is safe and can continue to its scheduled destination without having to make a diversion or emergency landing which is both costly and highly disruptive for passengers.
AvSax were devised in the UK by Environmental Defence Systems Ltd based in Huddersfield, Yorkshire, England, and are the most widely deployed thermal fire containment bags in the airline industry.
It won the Queen’s Award for innovation in the UK, the highest accolade any product or business can get.
For more on AvSax go to https://avsax.com/
