An e-cigarette left one passenger badly hurt after sparking a mid-air fire drama on a plane
An AvSax lithium battery fire containment bag
All these personal electronic items are powered by lithium batteries
A passenger was badly hurt when an e-cigarette caught fire as a plane was coming into land.
The emergency happened on board an Air France Airbus arriving at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris from Malaga and a formal investigation is now underway to find out exactly how the fire happened.
According to the Aviation Herald, the fire was sparked by the lithium battery inside the electronic cigarette and the cabin crew used “dedicated kit” to deal with the problem so the plane could land safely.
Unfortunately, one passenger suffered serious injuries and the incident is now being investigated by the Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation (BEA) in France.
The emergency happened on Wednesday, November 2, 2022 and the BEA has confirmed: “A passenger’s lithium battery caught fire during the short final. The cabin crew came to help with the dedicated kit.”
Lithium batteries are used to power all our personal electronic devices from mobile phones and laptops to c-cigarettes and headphones.
When batteries in them overheat or become faulty they can go into what’s known as thermal runaway which happens when one cell in a battery overheats it can produce enough heat – up to 900°C (1652°F) – to cause adjacent cells to overheat.
This can cause a lithium battery fire to flare repeatedly and they are then very difficult to put out.
The last place you want this to happen is in the confined space of an aircraft which is why many airline operators now carry lithium battery fire containment bags on board.
The world’s best-selling fire containment bag for personal electronic devices on aircraft is the award-winning AvSax (www.avsax.com) which are now on more than 16,770 aircraft operated by over 100 airline companies.
They have been used 33 times to deal with emergencies since the start of 2017 and every time they have been deployed the aircraft has been able to complete its journey safely with no need to divert or make an emergency landing. Diversions can be very costly to airline companies.
Many air ambulance helicopters in the UK now carry AvSax. More than 20 helicopters operated by specialist aerial emergency medical services company Babcock are now equipped with AvSax following a detailed look into the possible risks posed by lithium-ion batteries on aircraft.
AvSax won the prestigious Queen’s Award for Enterprise in the UK in 2018, the highest award any business in the UK can get for innovation.
