FAA Urges Passengers to Not Use Samsung Galaxy Note 7 on Planes | Hacker News Reader

FAA Urges Passengers to Not Use Samsung Galaxy Note 7 on Planes

wsj.com

187 pointspetethomas131 comments

Here's the actual release: https://www.faa.gov/news/press_releases/news_story.cfm?newsI...

Might as well just quote it in full:

> In light of recent incidents and concerns raised by Samsung about its Galaxy Note 7 devices, the Federal Aviation Administration strongly advises passengers not to turn on or charge these devices on board aircraft and not to stow them in any checked baggage.

I wonder why they aren't being banned, the way that hover boards were (though I believe the fire risk for the Note 7 is only present while charging)

Risk might not be great enough. They're balancing convenience and safety. IIRC the hoverboards had a higher risk because of how many cheap ones burst into flames and people didn't want to use them in flight so it wouldn't bother them if they didn't have them.

The "hoverboards" have a much bigger battery, with far more stored energy, and are also designed such that they can release that energy more quickly since the application requires it. A typical phone has around 10-15Wh capacity, hoverboards are in the 150-100Wh range, and laptop batteries are usually <100Wh; these are also cells which are designed more for long low-current discharges.

Once a battery starts releasing energy "more quickly than intended" it's only going to get quicker until it runs out of energy.

Honestly, I've always scratched my head slightly at the fact that one is allowed to travel with an explosive device, so long as it also functions as a battery - yet bottled water is way out.

It's trivially easy to make a lithium fire at 45,000 feet. Stamp on/bend an IMR 18450, and you have a torch which will burn through a window. Hell, you could probably just fold your phone in half - most batteries run the full height of devices these days.

Sure. But what is the maximum possible damage from a burning battery? Even if you managed to burn through a window, that'd be highly unlikely to down a modern airliner.

>* But what is the maximum possible damage from a burning battery?*

As opposed to the one from bottled water?

Airports around the world must make a fortune selling bottled water. That rule is never going away no matter how stupid it is :-(

I've yet to step foot in an airport that didn't have water fountains, and won't let you take an empty reusable bottle through security. There's no need to buy bottled water.

I don't remember any fountains in the Warsaw airport.

The exception that proves the rule (else it wouldn't be a rule, but a universal law that goes without saying)...

http://comicfury.com/forum/viewthread.php?id=26895

Heathrow, too, the last time I was there—though it was a long time ago. (I actually asked.)

I take empty bottles always, but most airports have no fountains and only hot water in the bathrooms.

I think the point is that it might not water...

In that case your "small toothpaste" (which is allowed) might not be that either.

And you can always dilute it in your air-hostess delivered water if you're so inclined and you just need to have your poison/whatever in liquid form...

The threat they are trying to guard against is binary liquid explosives, where you mix two liquids to make a bomb, so volume does matter.

Of course, it's a idiotic way to accomplish their goal anyway, but their goal is idiotic anyway, so it's all security theater anyway.

> binary explosives ...

Please, what a frigging joke. Be cooped up in a small bumpy space for hours trying to create a very touchy explosive.

... hydrogen peroxide, acetone, and sulfuric acid ... put a beaker containing the peroxide / acetone mixture into the ice water bath (Champagne bucket), and start adding the acid, drop by drop, while stirring constantly. Watch the reaction temperature carefully. The mixture will heat, and if it gets too hot, you'll end up with a weak explosive. In fact, if it gets really hot, you'll get a premature explosion possibly sufficient to kill you, but probably no one else.

After a few hours - assuming, by some miracle, that the fumes haven't overcome you or alerted passengers or the flight crew to your activities - you'll have a quantity of TATP with which to carry out your mission. Now all you need to do is dry it for an hour or two.

I hope you like lists.

I never said it was a legitimate threat (in fact, I called it idiotic), just saying that no one was ever worried about poison. You could say they should be worried about poison in the sense that poison attacks seem much easier and much more likely to be effective than explosive attacks, but then again they should be worried about nothing, since terrorism is so rare that it's not worth nearly the amount of attention it gets.

Yeah a bottle of nitroglycerin would probably take down a plane while it would be hard with a battery. Amateur videos of both:

nitro: https://youtu.be/BLB_F2P9pSI?t=3s

phone battery: https://youtu.be/GEo0RhEhFYc?t=19s

Not sure health and safety would have approved of the nitro one.

Lol! madaxe on his next flight: "Sir, could you please step over here"

I don't know about the battery you're referencing but as far as phones go: I once cooked a Li battery from a Galaxy S5 under a thermostream at 200C (totally not by accident guys!) and it outgassed a lot, but there was no signs of fire. The battery was certainly warped and distended, and no doubt it got hot!

Further, I've seen videos of people piercing phone batteries, and it outgasses, but there was no fire. Not saying it's impossible, but at least with phones, it's less likely.

Did it still hold a charge after you were done?

I confess I didn't try it. The whole casing had ruptured and was warped / distended. It wouldn't have even been close to fitting back in the phone. Also, passing current through it was the furthest thing from my mind. I assure you, it's not because I was embarrassed by my screwup and trying to clean up my mess as quickly as possible (plus feeling a little loopy from being gassed out).

I hope you went to a hospital to get checked out after that. Some of the gases from cooking li-ion batteries are poisonous, and can cause long-term damage.

Honestly, if you see a li-ion battery on fire, probably the best thing to do is to run. Throw it somewhere not-very-flammable if convenient, but get the heck out of there. And hold your breath.

I didn't go to the hospital. It was in a large well-ventilated room, so it was bad, but not awful (mostly could just smell something bad).

And it never actually caught fire. I did however throw it in a chamber we had fashioned for tests that might explode a battery (which this one was not supposed to be). One of my co-workers got the worst of it, and I think he ended up calling out sick the next day. I felt really bad about that.

*edit: Just wanted to add that your advice is still sound. I strongly advise against inhaling that stuff. Better yet, don't cook them, and don't deviate from your procedure just because someone came and asked you for help at precisely that moment.

You're comparing unlike things. Bottled water is not banned because someone decided it was more dangerous than lithium batteries. Bottles of liquid more than 100ml are banned because they can be used to carry on chemicals that can be combined to make something much more dangerous than a battery.

Note also that lithium-ion batteries over 100 watt-hours are banned too.

it isn't about safety. its about an illusion of effectiveness. 97% failure rate based on their own internal evaluations. If the water bottle was so dangerous, you wouldn't be allowed to throw it away in the trash can right next to the screeners.

I believe the fear with liquids is that several chemicals could be combined on the plane to create a bomb.

A bottle of fluid, by itself, is not likely to be very dangerous. Several bottles + time + privacy--maybe.

Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/651/

The hover boards were actually quite dangerous, partly because people tend to keep their phones by them when charging but not the boards hence greater fire risk, for example this https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2016/02/1...

It would be unenforceable. You can't make airport staff verify that the passenger is using a Pixel C or Xperia Z4 rather than a Galaxy Note. You'd be lucky if they don't just call them all iPads.

Unenforceability doesn't seem to block FAA or TSA policy from making other policies..

Probably, but it does have to pass through security. I suspect it'd be easy enough to do a closer inspection of items of a certain size?

I'm sitting here in the gates at Newark, and apparently United has already taken it upon themselves to do so.

...or at home, or in your car, or anywhere really.

Wasn't it already advised by the FAA not to put anything with a battery in it in checked luggage?

Australian airlines have just outright banned them.

http://www.smh.com.au/business/innovation/qantas-jetstar-vir...

Are they banning them from being brought aboard the planes? Because it just looks like Qantas is stopping them from being charged or used while aboard?

I've heard second hand that they're being asked to not use them or charge them (just flew into Australia).

If I understood this correctly, this is based on a higher (but unknown to consumers?) chance that the Galaxy Note 7 's battery could explode during flight and catch fire. Then, what would be considered a chance high enough that a laptop battery's explosion would not be a concern? Would it be safer to lock these phones into an explosion-proof box before they onboard the flight?

Oh, probably just the GLOBAL RECALL of that model in particular, due to actual BATTERY FIRES, or whatever. [0]

[0] http://www.wsj.com/articles/samsung-to-recall-galaxy-note-7-...

But yeah, other than that, who knows?

Every story I've read has either had an incident while the Phone charging. Any reports of incidents while the device was simply being used? Or even more unlikely, powered down?

Note that the the FAA is just encouraging you to (1) Not check them in luggage (where nobody can put a fire out easily), (2) Not charge them, (3) Use them inflight.

I haven't seen any problems with the phone in a powered down state - anybody else?

The risk is only while the Samsung device is charging (as I recall?). As for other devices, I suppose they could issue the warning "please do not hit your device with a hammer during flight".

Fun fact I read recently: more than a million people are in the air at any one time, globally. If laptop batteries exploded even rarely, we'd hear about it.

It depends on the mode of failure, but these problems happen when a battery is stressed. Charging or discharging at a high rate especially with high temperatures and during/after physical stress can cause runaways.

Protection circuitry is supposed to prevent runaways, something is obviously failing. It could be an overheating component or faulty high voltage protection circuits or simply just bad thermal design.

The Aviation Herald lists a few incidents involving batteries:

http://avherald.com/h?search_term=batter&opt=0&dosearch=1&se...

Nice find. No doubt batteries are a hazard particularly when exposed/not installed in devices as many of these examples describe... batteries found squashed between the seat and so on. If we remove cases of smoking loose batteries, or crushed devices in luggage, the failure rate is extremely low.

This is actually my #1 fear in flying in 2016.

Some rough baggage packing under the plane that damages a laptop battery in the gate checked bag. Every time I fly I watch people gate check bags with laptops and more even after the announcement to "remove all lithium batteries & electronics".

I wish more people understood how dangerous this could be and would take 3 minutes to take electronics out and carry them on board with them.

It seems unwise to gate-check a bag with a laptop anyway, given the way the luggage handlers throw bags around. Gate-checking a roller board suitcase with clothing is one thing, but I wouldn't check anything fragile or particularly expensive.

Sometimes there is no choice, e.g. in the case when I carry two or three laptops for work reasons, and the weight limit of carry-on baggage means only one fits in hand luggage.

A laptop packed properly in a hard bag full of clothes isn't very likely to take any hit, though. If the baggage handlers run over it by a truck, then it may be damaged, but not in plane.

If it was for work reasons I'd just ship them.

Ironically, for people who travel a lot, the exact opposite happens and we are frequently "encouraged" to use our baggage allotment to reduce courier costs for the company.

The business model is obvious, and has been tried at least once: http://qz.com/309185/this-startup-wants-to-pay-you-to-fly-wi...

Particularly for confidential things, or when in real hurry, I really can't ship it, I have to carry it along.

A typical case is that we have software in development, I'm about to demonstrate it to a customer tomorrow, and before I leave for the trip, I'm making the final build and tweaking of demonstration data set at office and installing in the laptop that I use as a demo server.

By the time I'm ready, the DHL shipments for the day have gone and if I ship it, it would be there one day after my demo. So it has to be in my luggage.

Yes, checked-in luggage may also be lost and delayed, but with direct flights, I'll be fine as long as I'm not going to CDG (Paris).

What airline actually checks the weight limit on carry-on bags? I've never had mine checked for weight and I carry a backpack that looks like it shouldn't meet the size guidelines, but does.

Not OP, but anecdotally, this happens a lot outside the US. The most recent airline to make me weigh my carry on was Qantas, but I don't think it has ever been required of me within the US.

It depends on the route, but I saw this done on many flights from mainland China to Europe, on several airlines.

(And considering the amount of carry-on luggage that people routinely bring in Chinese domestic flights, this is not surprising; there's a limit to what the overhead lockers can take, not to mention that pathetic slot where your feet should be.)

I flew out of Beijing recently, and there all check-in baggage was immediately scanned for batteries. If they found what they thought were batteries, you had to remove them from the bag and take it on carry-on.

I really like that. Now that would actually make me feel safer.

meanwhile TSA is hard at work x-raying shoes

And theft. I've heard of items being removed from luggage after you check. A laptop is probably too tempting.

Even for gate-checked bags, the gate agent is supposed to announce that lithium batteries cannot be in the bag, and should probably confirm that with the passenger when tagging the bag.

Some people have no idea what battery chemistry is in their laptops. Especially for models where the battery isn't even removable. I don't mean this as a criticism, it's just not necessarily something that everyone notices.

Yea, I think this is really the crux of it. The GA nor the pax know whether or not a battery or device is Li-ion.

Edit: or I guess if it was just a battery they could read on it but I bet that never ever happens.

Are you saying there are laptops with batteries that don't fall in this dangerous category, or are you saying people don't know that all laptop batteries fall in this category?

There are people who think their laptops do not have a battery at all and run on their own power like a human does.

...well, I didn't see that one coming!

I know people that still believe that the power for cordless drills gets transmitted from the charger to the drill via something like wifi. They're super-careful not to stand in the LOS between the drill and the charger.

Some people probably shouldn't operate power tools. Then again, with that level of caution, they are probably safer than many "experts".

I definitely hear the announcements a lot... whether or not they follow up "e-cigarettes and spare lithium batteries" with "and other electronics" or "such as those found in personal electronics" is very hit and miss.

At my regional airport they just hand out the tags and don't ask any other questions or offer any other guidance to each individual passenger. It's just the one main blanket announcement.

I think unless they are checking for them to the same extent that they are checking for liquids and weapons in carry on it is likely that plenty of people aren't following the rules either intentionally or from ignorance.

Security theater

A while back I checked a second, relatively bulky laptop that I was carrying for a new employee. As I understood it the current rule is that you shouldn't check a laptop battery that isn't plugged in but it is fine as part of the laptop?

On another flight I also checked a power bank before learning of the rules surrounding them, which depending on capacity could be a lot more dangerous.

I'm not sure about specifics there. It's an interesting thing to think about though... whether a battery with exposed leads has more potential to short vs being attached to something. (I would assume the exposed leads would be worse.)

You never ever leave leads exposed. That is absolutely the fastest way to start a fire. Either pack it with the equipment, or make damn sure you have some industrial covers for those leads.

And yes, I have had people do a piss poor job securing their leads, and then have the equipment rub up against metal, and "Poof" - instant smoke. (Thankfully the luggage was with us, so we were able to stop it before it became a fire)

Me too. I fly a lot, and the thought of a damaged battery, or somebody leaving their notebook in sleep mode, packed in a suitcase of flammable clothes with all of the other luggage gives me anxiety at times.

If I have both laptops with me, I check the heavier one, but take the battery out and carry it on.

I fly from Hong Kong to the US quite a bit (16 hours), so alternate landing sites are few and far between. That, and everyone seems to be carrying a Samsung Galaxy or iPhone from HK.

> but take the battery out

obviously not a mac user

Clearly not. Mac users are used to their laptops actually going to sleep when they shut the lid.

My work HP, however, is regularly scorching hot when I get home as it's been on in my backpack the whole time despite me shutting the lid and despite the instruction to 'go to sleep when the lid is closed'. How there's not some sort of thermal cutoff I do not know, but I know for a fact that there is not.

Edit: by 'regularly' I mean a few times a year. Still far, far too many.

For the record, this happens a few times a year too with my MacBook Pro.

Then you should probably return it. This is not normal behavior.

VM user?

It may not be the fault of HP per se. Windows itself tended to cause this on every laptop I ever used by randomly deciding it needs to wake up the machine and check for updates.

If this is not caused by the Windows issue mentioned by TeMPOraL, I might have another explanation:

My former notebook (Acer Timeline 1810TZ) used to wake up from a press on any keyboard button, which I was unable to change. The issue here is that with sufficient pressure (e.g. when I was running with the device in a messenger bag), the lid would bend enough to actually press a key and wake up the machine.

My hackish solution was a script that would automatically put the laptop back to sleep a few seconds after waking up, which I then manually killed after intentionally waking the device.

AFAIK pretty much all Intel CPUs do have a thermal cutoff, and I expect AMDs do as well.

Unfortunately, it's close to 100 degrees. It's only there to prevent damage to the CPU, not the rest of the system (or your back). It also isn't guaranteed to shut down the laptop, just the CPU.

So it really depends on how well the motherboard manufacturer did their job.

No, not anymore except for my 2011 iMac 27 ;)

I did have a 2011 Macbook that did heat up quite a bit, but I always carried it on for fear of damage and theft back then.

Flammable clothes is kind of an oxymoron. Pretty much any textile intended to be work gets treated with flame retardants.

And they're washed off during the first machine wash. Your point is?

That and I have lived in SE Asia where there's a lot of handcrafted fabrics, foods, and other unbelievable things checked-in and carried on luggage once you're flying on a plane not bound for a major city. Just look at the Customs line in JFK or Newark to see what they pull out of people's luggage if you're coming from Asia or Africa. I can't speak to other points of origin.

I don't know of any reports of fires in luggage holds.

I know there are fire suppression devices as mandated by the FAA. It used to be just containment, but they changed it to suppression thank goodness.

Nonetheless, I vote for carry-on where you can see it before a single-point failure occurs with the fire suppression system unseen in the luggage hold. I can imagine the fire suppression system either not being charged or armed from my related experience with safety issues in the hospitality industry.

And yet, this has never happened.

Your comment was after mine above. Never? I wouldn't rush judgement. Here is an incident of a lithium battery in a camera bag in an overhead bin causing a fire and subsequent return to departure airport [1], and another of an air-purifier exploding in the cabin causing burns to one passenger and hospitalization of some others due to smoke inhalation [2].

And here's one where the crew of a UPS cargo plane lost their lives due to a fire with rigin located near a pallet containing some lithium batteries in the main deck cargo area. Granted fire suppression was not there I think, but you get the picture [3].

I have not worked in the airline industry, but the above incidents were reported, and were highly-visible, occurring in the passenger cabin. I wonder if there are any unreported incidents of the fire suppression system going off in the cargo/baggage hold? I'll have to read through the source material more.

I know it's speculative, but I say it having worked in a high-risk job where minor incidents like paper cuts and stapler accidents were reported by the front office, but much more serious incidents occurred in the underwater work we did, and did not get duly reported. Safety is a diligence game, and we tend to get jaded by daily 'minor' incidents until a big one occurs and rattles everyone to muster, or it sees the light of the press & public.

[1] http://www.skybrary.aero/index.php/A320,_vicinity_New_York_J...

[2] http://www.skybrary.aero/index.php/B738,_en-route,_Colorado_...

[3] http://www.skybrary.aero/index.php/B744,_vicinity_Dubai_UAE,...

>I wish more people understood how dangerous this could be and would take 3 minutes to take electronics out and carry them on board with them.

All kinds of electronics are in the cargo, including tons of packages of electronics mailed to users in another city/country.

Why would it be any more dangerous to have them in cargo than on board the passenger seats? Obviously cargo has better wall protection, and automatic fire extinguish systems...

There are a lot of mixed reviews of the effectiveness of halon on li-ion batteries on fire. It definitely failed on actual battery cargo. One battery in luggage may be stoppable but I wouldn't want to find out first hand.

https://batterybro.com/blogs/18650-wholesale-battery-reviews...

The batteries don't "explode" – they self-combust.

Better to have the phone out in the open (so you can see it catching fire) and throw it in a bucket of cold water – the water will absorb most of the heat and prevent the fire getting out of control (it won't extinguish the fire, which will continue in the water).

I'm confused. I thought trying to put out lithium fires with water was an awful idea?

Rechargable Lithium batteries contain surprisingly limited amounts of it. And its not in there in its elemental form anyway. Lithium batteries burn because of the potential energy they have after charging. You can drive nails through discharged Lithium Ion batteries without much happening.

Please don't do this, when rechargable lithium batteries are "discharged", they are not discharged fully, doing so would damage the battery. Charging circuits have a "cutoff" voltage where they report the battery to be empty, but there is still plenty of stored energy in the cells.

There is very little energy left past the "knee" where the cutoff is.

Now I hope samsung will bring back the removable battery. The only reason I can still use my note 3 is because I was able to easily replace the battery with a new one.

In fact all phones should have accessible batteries as the battery is in my opinion a consumable which will need replacing at some point.

> The only reason I can still use my note 3 is because I was able to easily replace the battery with a new one.

that is exactly why you won't see removable batteries in new phones; how else do you drive the new buy cycle every 2 years? as speed and features, phones are pretty much 2010-desktops; good enough for what they do so they don't need replacement on the new hardware generation

I don't think that's the reason. If your battery is dead, it's easy and cheap to get it replaced nowadays. Not a good enough reason to buy a new phone.

It's psychology: people want an upgrade justification, and the threat of a few days without a phone is enough for most people.

Also you can usually swap the phone for a refurbished model with a new battery. I did that with my iPhone 4. Slightly more expensive than a battery replacement service, but same day.

If you want me to buy another phone every year or two you will need to provide me with something I want and not force me because the old one is now broke. Especially at a price tag of almost $1000.

I didn't buy the note 5 not because of the fixed battery but because they removed the SD slot.

Google pushing out a new letter each year is working wonders even if the hardware does not degrade at all. People remember how a major update years ago did make things noticeably better and won't easily give up hope that the current increments would be similar (same thing for hardware btw, people remember the huge progress between the very first generations of smartphones and want to repeat that experience, no matter how futile the attempt might be).

Internet lore suggests that the majority of users does not care at all for Android versions, but I don't think that this is true: median users do care, just not as much as the vocal group that mistakes the lower level for not caring at all.

I wonder if google even wants to continue the yearly update circus or if they feel pressure from manufacturers to keep that wheel rolling.

It might be too subtle for you to see but there's real advancement going on in those new releases. Some of those features are security-related, which is the same kind of thing that drives many iOS features. IMO Google does good by releasing new updates to Android and for their branded devices they usually offer one or more of these updates before they stop supporting them. If you choose to root the devices, often the community will support the new Android releases with their ROMs.

> one or more of these updates

Which ends up (in some cases) not even being two years of support, for instance the Nexus 6.

Meanwhile the iPhone 5 will run iOS 10 when it comes out, making it four years of updates, and counting for that phone.

Security might be served much better with a more "LTS" Android that would give hardware companies less excuses to leave devices behind. Not only less excuses, but also less incentive to do so: "no more boring security updates" is a much weaker carrot to lure users to new devices than "no more exciting new sugary snacks", which usually also implies no more security updates anyways.

Yep. I'm still using my galaxy s2. Had to replace the back twice and the battery once. Bought it in 2013. Total I've paid for my phone is about $50 over the last 3 years. It's really crazy how many people have been tricked into thinking they absolutely need to pay hundreds every year or 2 and that they need to pay dozens of dollars per month for service. Absolute racket.

Have you updated that phone regularly? I have one for testing here, and it's become so slow, I don't even know how one could use it every day... Even if they bring back removable batteries, software updates will take care of the deprecation. Just look at an iPad 2 with iOS9 today...

Oh god heavens no. Turning off updates was the first thing I did when I got my phone.

Unfortunately, the software and to some extent the network assumes frequent upgrades.

Despite having a relatively newish s4, the number of apps that simply won't work with my phone is astonishing. And once I passed the 2-year point of ownership, the number of network glitches has noticeably increased (dropped calls, messages taking hours to go through, loss of 4G for hours for no apparent reason).

I wouldn't be surprised if some of these glitches are intentional.

That's why I switched to the LGV10 -- which has a removable battery. It's successor the V20 also has a removable battery. Nothing beats going from 5% charge to 100% in 15 seconds.

I just wish it was an OLED display and I would be onboard the next day.

So thats two models of phones that explode or set themselves on fire, a wall charger with illegal insulation imported to America, two models phone phones AND tablets that destroy SDCards likely due to faulty or cheap voltage regulators and a washing machine that sets houses on fire, not exactly a stellar record over the last 5-10 years...

What happens after I send my Note 7 back, and get a new one with the problem corrected? Will I still be banned on Australian airlines?

I suspect it will be a few months, and they'll release the ban, based on numbers from Samsung (replacements as a percentage of initial sales)

So what's weird to me is how the FAA is issuing this notice, yet for hoverboards didn't issue any notice; airlines took it upon themselves to ban them.

"Urge."??? I think they can do better

Like say "pretty please".

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