A plane had to be evacuated after a battery bag burst into flames in an overhead locker.

Passengers were boarding the flight from LaGuardia airport in New York to Houston when smoke began to pour from a passenger’s bag in the locker.

The charger was for a vaping pen and cabin crew managed to douse the flames with a fire extinguisher but the cabin was filled with smoke so the plane had to be evacuated. The passengers had to use a different plane to continue their journey.

A statement from the airline company said: “Smoke appeared from a passenger’s bag in an overhead bin, caused by an overheated battery pack inside the bag. Passengers deplaned routinely through the main cabin door and continued on to Houston in a different aircraft.”

* The problem of fires in personal electronic devices on passenger planes seems to be growing. One way to tackle such incidents on planes is to use an AvSax fire containment bag which can deal with fires in personal electronic devices and are now carried on aircraft operated by 65 airline companies across the world – including some of the biggest and best-known.

AvSax  – which won the Queen’s Award for Enterprise in 2018 - has been used 28 times to deal with emergencies since the start of 2017.

More than 13,000 AvSax are now carried on aircraft worldwide. Deployment is so effective that extremely expensive diversions to alternate airports are avoided. 

* Written by Andy Hirst at AH! PR http://www.ah-pr.com/