Rising number of lithium battery incidents on airplanes worry crew | Hacker News Reader

Rising number of lithium battery incidents on airplanes worry crew

cbsnews.com

76 pointsthunderbong96 comments

Some folks in front of me had a mifi hotspot light on fire at the airport while in line to board. I saw the smoke and thought they were trying to get one last vape in, and told them it was bold of them. They said they didn't vape, after which I said their backpack was smoking. Gate lady made them throw it in the (blastproof, I guess) trash can. They eventually got to board but had to toss the backpack.

That said they got to keep the contents. They sat across from us where we got to breathe in residual lithium smoke the whole flight, and allegiant still wanted to charge us for water.

> allegiant still wanted to charge us for water.

I'd be surprised if they didn't have to charge for water with flights from Memphis to Vegas for $38[0] and Cincinnati to Fort Myers for $44[1].

[0] https://www.allegiantair.com/low-cost-las-vegas-flights

[1] https://www.allegiantair.com/deals

The behavior of ultra low cost airlines is often inexcusable, but understandable, and why I don't fly them. Their employees are usually not allowed to make "good reason" exceptions because exceptions are nebulous and passengers may argue why the next time isn't a "good reason" and airlines want that money. It's like a flying cruise ship; the fare gets you a chair and nothing else because the everything else is where the profit comes from.

(This business model is why we are seeing a rise in junk fees and "surcharges". Airlines and cable companies and hotels got away with it for so long with no major pushback that everyone else feels emboldened in light of this economic slowdown.)

I watched someone pretend to fall asleep after getting their bottle of water. Then pretended to be asleep until they landed. They got off the plan with a free bottle of water.

What airline? Most will just bill to the card used to buy the ticket.

That’s not really an authorized transaction

Neither is walking off without paying for the water.

Spirit. It was the first and only time I flew with them. I’m too old for that nonsense

Good grief! Sad when someone needs to play games for a bottle of water.

A good example of the future we have to look forward to

The lithium smoke was free.

> A CBS News Investigation has discovered similar incidents have been happening much more frequently in the skies over the United States. The FAA verifies the number of lithium-Ion battery fires jumped more 42% [sic] in the last five years.

I just checked several estimates of iPhone/iPad sales and number of Android users using a cursory Google search.

Guess what? The increase in the number of fires correlates with growth in the number of electronic devices sold. CBSNews at 11.

> Guess what? The increase in the number of fires correlates with growth in the number of electronic devices sold.

That would be odd. Surely a huge number of the devices sold replace prior devices. More interesting would be the number of phones on planes and I would assume that this is mostly flat at this point.

Presumably, the base sales would be for replacement. You don't need increasing sales to handle replacement rate. I'd expect ~40% more device sales roughly means 40% more devices on planes, which means ~40% more device incidents on planes.

Though, that's not to say it's not worrying, just that it's not exactly a surprising increase.

According to [1] the growth in smart phone market penetration was closer to 15-20% than 40% but definitely non-negligible over that time period. I assume smartphones are significantly likelier to have a battery accident than dumb cellphones due to the higher power requirements. On the other hand, iPads are definitely not that wide spread - that number is also far more strongly correlated.

I'll admit I should have been more precise - I actually checked stats for several other types of devices. Given all the new wireless headphones like Airpods, all the growth in vape usage (especially cannabis vapes, which became legal and a TSA nothingburger in many states around that time), and so on, I think the burden of proof is on showing that the increase in fire exceeds the growth in number of devices. Based on personal experience, most vapes are very easy to overheat because the on button sticks out on many devices and it's the kind of thing a smoker would have in carry on.

Edit: Just realized I got a separate smart phone for work in that time period.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/mobile/

A lot of cheap gadgets from a certain large Asian country of dubious quality. E.g. a portable battery obtained from Amazon. It will be a no-name brand and may or may not meet the certifications it actually has printed on its label.

We've basically ceded the gadget market to these producers, most of us don't have the money to buy a genuine Apple magsafe battery (or if we do, we feel like it isn't worth it).

A-certain-Express and A-certain-mazon are top seller.

Maybe you have the causation the wrong way around--about every time there is a lithium battery fire on a plane, someone has to buy a new phone, after all.

While cellphones might have plateued, what hasn't I'd imagine are travel batteries. People get terrible ones from amazon or for free from places with a random corporate logo printed on the side. It's probably a lot of junk that's not nearly as scrutinized as a smartphone with qc. With each year more of these end up being gifted by friends and relatives as a cheap and useful gift and put into circulation.

Sure smartphones may have plateaued, but that doesn't mean they quality of them is stable either. Low cost foreign brands are popular because they're now good enough for many consumers.

But on your point: I have received 3 of the travel batteries you've described as promotional/corporate gifts. They're all junk, and their housing is weak. While I've never used any of them, it wouldn't be such a stretch for me to charge one up as a "back up" battery when I go travelling. (Obviously now I won't.)

I visited China before Covid, on Chinese airlines I flew on, the use of powerbanks was prohibited during flight. It seems they're aware that the chances of a dodgy lithium ion battery in their midst is a lot higher.

The airport luggage scanners are also able to detect lithium ion batteries, one time I was sure I didn't have any in my check-in luggage, but the scanner detected an 800mAh camera battery...

Could that curve also be inversely related to the cost curve for lithium devices in general over the same period? Consumer technology drives cost of X down, X is now decent option for high-performance technology Y, sometimes tech X used in Y causes failures.

This, here, if I had to guess, is probably the driver of avionics-related lithium incidents: the avx batteries share an awful lot of the supply chain with consumer batteries, and these batteries have an increasing amount of software way way way down in the assembly where auditors and mx engineers might not see. That software might be driving the cells within a particular environment / load range, and when it gets dinged outside of that range, unpredictable things happen.

This is very very very very similar to root cause for an incident investigation I was party to. Military rotorcraft near "hot and high" operation limitations. Many other things were suspected because no one wanted it to be the lithium, but sure 'nuff, the microcontrollers deep down in their little battery brains were not doing what they needed to do, and didn't plug into the bus of the FMS/FMC's BMS (flight management computer's battery management subsystem)

> CBSNews at 11

Always has been https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hh-Z8_6_m4Q

The Boeing 787 had problems with the aircraft's own lithium batteries going into thermal runaway and catching fire.[1] Fortunately, on the ground at an airport. When it happened a second time, all 787s were grounded for months.

I suspect that once there's a better battery technology, maybe lighter lithium-iron-phosphate or a noncombustible solid battery, the current lithium ion technology will be prohibited on aircraft.

[1] https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/boeing-787-dreamliner...

In 2010, UPS Flight 6 in Dubai was brought down by a fire that started in a pallet of Lithium Ion batteries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UPS_Airlines_Flight_6

The article claims that there’s one incident per week for these passenger-owned device fires on commercial flights. When they happen in the cabin it’s spectacular and terrifying but the bigger worry is when a fire smolders out of sight.

So should one not pack a power bank (Anker) in your check in luggage?

You shouldn’t and, at least in Europe, any kind of spare battery is forbidden in checked luggage. You also shouldn’t use power banks at all during flight.

Wait what, Since when has that been the rule ?

A laptop is a power bank to anything you plug into it by USB...

I think it's due to many power banks being so shitty that the chance of them catching fire in normal operation is not insignificant.

From the EASA guidelines on lithium batteries (https://www.easa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/dfu/Backgroun...):

> Also, spare batteries, including power banks, should not be recharged while on board the aircraft. Additionally, power banks should not be connected or providing power to a device while on board the aircraft.

The article made it click for me why they seem to care so much about you damaging your electronics lost in the seats.

Is there something about air travel that makes these batteries go or is it just a relatively uncommon thing that creates a common problem given the number of flights?

You're in an enclosed tube with lots of people, so fire is a lot worse.

Most lithium ion battery fires in cabins are from loose vape batteries, probably shorting on keys or change.

Some are from crushing pouch cells in tablets or phones, sometimes by seats.

Besides that, there isn't anything about planes that is causing these fires.

I would imagine that the proliferation of cheap devices using lithium batteries also contributes to the issue somewhat. While anything with a lithium-ion battery is susceptible (as seen with the exploding Samsung Note debacle), bargain bin electronics are almost certainly not selecting batteries to as high of a standard as something with better profit margins, like an ultrabook or flagship phone.

Cheap chargers also likely contribute. There's limits to how much charger misbehavior even the best batteries can tolerate and some of the charger bricks sold on Amazon, in gas stations, etc are horrifyingly bad.

Yes, cheap devices are real problem. China has strict rules for transporting batteries that are actually enforced.

Also no lighters on plane, because they know in practice they will be used in lavatories. They will find a lighter, or even just a spring from a lighter that fell apart a long time ago. Beijing airport security is quite impressive actually. They probably won't notice the knife you accidentally left your bag, however.

There really need to be rules in place to prevent these ticking time bombs that are cheap devices with 0 safety considerations or QA from being brought onto planes.

One contributor is that most batteries have a protective circuit built in. It usually has a DW01 chip and a pair of MOSFETs to prevent overcurrent charging, overvoltage, undervoltage, and overcurrent discharging, all for under a cent.

Since most batteries are protected, the cheapest chargers can be 'dumb', with a simple constant current output. When the battery is charged, the built in protection device will stop the charge when charged.

However, only most batteries have this protection. If you plug one of these cheap dumb chargers into a battery that doesn't have the protection circuit, then it will catch fire after a few hours.

The usual culprit is 'replacement' (non-OEM) batteries for an expensive device, for example a drill. The OEM version has a smart charger and a protected battery. A non-OEM battery lacks protection. A non-OEM charger is dumb. Either alone is safe. Combine them, and a fire happens. And because the device is expensive, the people in China who designed the battery and charger never had the original device to do proper testing with.

It's more to do with sheer number of things using Lithium in their power supply that's upping the numbers. Recently Vapes, as well as every single passenger carrying one. The odds have become difficult to manage - so says my local long-haul pilot - and a thermal runaway is not easy to deal with at oxygen-rich height.

https://www.cross-safety.org/uk/safety-information/cross-saf...

Moving the seat whilst something is stuck can cause it to puncture the battery - bad!

Also, a seat that can’t get out of recline can ground the whole airliner, too.

I've wondered how long it will take for them to put an emergency fireproof bag behind/under every seat. Surely it's worth the expense. Maybe they'll do something when it one day costs more in bad PR.

People want to use them during the flight. A storage container wouldn't get used.

You can dump the burning phone into them. The gasses are probably worse than the initial fire.

A burning battery spewing out gases is going to quickly pressurize any sort of bag, isn't it?

They work really well just look at the bags for racing drone batteries on YouTube.

I looked up a video. The guy was piercing lipo batteries with nails, inside and outside fire proof bags. The bag appeared to be spewing out just as much toxic gas as a battery not in a bag.

> Surely it's worth the expense.

you'd think the same about parachutes for everyone which could have rescued lives on some of the plane disasters.

Parachutes would barely save any lives.

First, commercial air travel is incredibly safe.

Second, parachuting requires extensive training which a negligible number of passengers have. It's not like you just jump out of a plane and it works automatically. Not to mention dealing with cold, oxygen deprivation, landing in the middle of the ocean, etc.

Third, it's going to take at least a half hour for everyone to put parachutes on and jump out in an orderly fashion. How many aviation accidents have had a half hour of extra time where they already knew they would fatally crash?

You just invented https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cirrus_Airframe_Parachute_Syst... even though i don't know how that would work on a commercial sized plane.

Ballistic recovery parachute systems aren't scalable. The necessary size and weight would be completely impractical for anything much larger or faster than a Cirrus.

Commercial air travel is very safe. The few crashes that do occur usually involve flight into terrain, mid-air collisions, or structural break up. Parachutes are ineffective for those failure modes. The parachute on a Cirrus mainly protects against total engine or flight control system failures, which aren't a real concern on airliners.

Were the 737 Max crashes flight control failures?

Parachutes wouldn't help with that anyway, the crashes were just after take off.

The last few times I've flown, I've noticed that with the other 'emergency' gear that the crew has stowed away in one of the overhead bins, they now have a fireproof bag in there too. So it's not quite at every seat, but they do seem to carry some on board.

That does very little for situations where checked-in baggage has a lithium ion battery that ignites. They tell you to remove things like laptops and portable batteries from your checked in luggage, but I haven't heard disposable vapes mentioned, and those very often have lithium ion batteries too.

While they’re not under every seat, battery fire containment bags are already included in airlines’ onboard emergency equipment, for flight attendants to use when needed.

https://avsax.com/news/what-to-do-if-a-lithium-battery-catch...

And hopefully some tongs to move the devices into the bag while still molten.

I'm perversely curious how bad the smoke issue is when this happens on planes. Honestly fucked up, but I actually don't think the fire is really that much of an issue, is almost no real threat. You bet your ass the plane, the seats, the carpet, the bulkheads are non-flammable. There's no real threat here, from what I can tell. Other than the harm of a major smoke release. I know there's a ton of air systems on planes... It's be so interesting to see a video of an extreme battery detonation test on a plane, to see how the smoke & air systems handle it.

It doesn't really help that much. Lithium battery fires don't need environmental oxygen.

Thank you CBS News for including a state-by-state incident graphic in your article. While putting out fires on airplanes, most of us are indeed concerned which state we're flying over at the time.

Here's a question this group might know the answer to: are lithium battery and lithium-ion battery being used interchangeably by airlines? When they say "lithium" do I need to read that to also mean li-ion as well? Am I the dummy who thinks they mean two separate things and everyone else knows they mean the same thing?

They're the same thing. At this point no batteries are made purely from lithium (I remember seeing some research on that front).

It's all lithium ion, lithium polymer, etc. In casual settings the terms get used interchangeably.

It's not all the same thing.

In general, rechargable batteries are lithium ion, with a few different chemistries that differ in danger.

The other main class of lithium batteries are lithium metal batteries, which have metallic lithium as the name suggests. In general these are not rechargeable. Lithium metal AA/AAA batteries are better than alkalines but more expensive. Any button battery that has a name starting with "CR" is a lithium metal battery.

So if you know the context is rechargeable batteries, "lithium" and "lithium ion" are basically the same term. But in a wider context "lithium battery" has more uses.

Lithium primary cells (not rechargeable) are very different from Lithium ion, Lithium polymer, Lithium iron phosphate, etc.

Yes, they're basically used interchangeable even though it's not 100% accurate. A LiIon cell versus a LiPoly spicy pillow may be different, but from this perspective they're the same.

Ideally we'd have smarter policies, I think? I can bring on 2x+ RC hobbyist 100WHr lipo packs that scares even me, a lot.

Amazing tech, super cheap. 4.5Ah 22.6V pack, converts down to usb-c ranges with absurd efficiency, 24v->120vac inverters are awesome. Packs are so cheap. High power ones can fully discharge in under a minute, which is 6.5kW output, absurd. But my heavens these things are just terrifying. I occasionally use two for a short-range electric skateboard & am shocked nothing has yet exploded or caught on fire. They're more durable than I expect but there is so much energy here so unprotected. And I as someone who watches the internal resistance change over time- I know for real these things age, a lot over time, and eventually some might well become quite unhappy monsters.

But if I had lifepo4 packs, the only thing catching on fire would be whatever the pack was powering. Lifepo4 is amazing. Drive nails into it, set it on fire, whatever. Great cycle count too.

Keep an eye on those skateboard batteries. I left a few of those charging and burned down the house. Get an ammo crate for them!

Yikes! I use a charging pouch for sure but definitely think of going further.

I also have a pretty great charger & charge gently, usually 1A on my 4.5Ah cells. Barely anything. And I monitor cell resistance closely to spot trouble ahead of time. That's key.

I feel pretty responsible here, but I also know I am playing with a dangerous dangerous scary scary thing. I still don't feel great about this. I charge while I'm home & leave my charge setup in the middle of open floor, away from flammable things. But oh I know it's still a risk. I should get a charge crate. Thanks. Sorry that happened to you. Terrifying.

I'm surprised that after all of these years commercial airliners don't have jettison tubes/boxes/compartments ...

A one-way, pressure (and possibly mechanical) airlock (or sphincter ?) that you can force a small item out of. This feature would have been useful even prior to mobile phones and batteries. It is my understanding that jet liners dump fuel anytime it is expedient to[1] so this is hardly the worst outcome in terms of pollution and has, essentially, zero cost over a body of water.

I am unsure whether a jet liner can descend to a breathable altitude (say, 10000 feet) and feed "fresh", or ambient, air into the plane. That seems like a nice redundancy to have and I wonder how realistic it would be to implement ...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_dumping

Jet liners do not need to descend to feed ambient air into the plane. Cabin pressurization is done by feeding compressed air from the engine to air conditioner and then to cabin. So in theory yes, this is possible.

However in case of fire, actively feeding fresh air may make things worse by providing more oxygen to burn.

Airliners are always cycling in fresh air, no matter the altitude.

> I am unsure whether a jet liner can descend to a breathable altitude (say, 10000 feet) and feed "fresh", or ambient, air into the plane. That seems like a nice redundancy to have and I wonder how realistic it would be to implement ...

This is already in place, and has been since planes began going high enough to require pressurized cabins. The engines basically suck in lots of air which is compressed, resulting in a higher temperature. Most of this goes into the combustion, but some of it goes into other applications, such as the environmental systems supplying the cabin with air.

It doesn't have the same effect as opening all the windows in a car, but considering the outside temperature[1] that might not be such a bad thing.

[1] - https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/standard-atmosphere-d_604...

Fun fact, the f35 jet fighter has kept needing more and more bleed-air for thermal management, and it's putting more than expected wear & load on the engines.

One of the next major upgrades is the P&W Engine Core Upgrade which replaces some of the inner engine, and one of the main features is a greatly increased thermal management capability for the engine, since it has so much more bleed air demand than originally expected. I think maybe more bleed air too? This after GE's proposed XA100 got turned down, which would have been even more of a beast (albeit not fit in the Marines stol jet).

In many emergencies pilots will conduct an "emergency descent" down to 10000 as part of the checklist (or memory item). It is a dive that you would never otherwise experience in a commercial jet.

I was on a flight where one of the pilots had a heart attack and got to experience weightlessness or close to it for a few seconds. Cool to think about what that felt like now but in moment.. not so much. Anyway, the pilot survived and the delay was surprisingly short given the circumstances.

“This is your backup pilot speaking. Our captain has gone into cardiac arrest, but we will dive to 10,000 feet and give him a bit of the old spicy bra and have him right back up and you back on schedule in no time!”

I had something like this happen once too.

“Attention passengers, this is your captain speaking. I’m not feeling well. The first officer will be landing the plane as soon as possible.”

I was quite surprised how quickly they can safely and smoothly lane a plane when there’s urgency. We were at the gate with paramedics waiting within 10-15 minutes from cruise altitude, and we still had to backtrack 100 miles or so to the airport.

Overall delay was only about 2 hours which was mostly finding another pilot on short notice.

I did an international flight to a country that had spotty power and it was a 3+ week trip.

So naturally I grabbed my kids firetablet 5000 mah battery packs (x2), my iPhone charger, personal and work laptop, and a couple sets of AirPods.

Needless to say my backpack was heavy. One airline (Asiana) wanted to weigh my carryon and told me it was too heavy. I told them I had reservations checking lithium batteries to a non pressurized cabin. I offered to pay a fee but could t really just toss the laptops etc (the bulk of the weight).

Eventually they let it slide because of the batteries but for a second I thought I was gonna be stuck in a terminal or be forced to Chuck a MacBook or something in the trash (and let be serious, the work machine goes first)

The baggage compartments of modern jet aircraft are pressurized

I believe it is still generally a rule lithium batteries cant be checked.

Sounds disturbing, but when I think about the thousands of flights, 100000s of passengers, almost all with at least 1 LiIon device…a lot more incidents should have happened at this point.

Semi-related story: I started a flight from a not-1st world country to another not-1st in the times when all cell phones had to be switched off. When we approached landing, the cellphones got contact and started buzzing and ringing with incoming messages. Apparently a lot of people had ignored the order to turn off the phone. I realized that in my 1st world, people follow those orders, in other countries they just don‘t. If cell phones posed a danger to flight safety, somewhere a plane should have crashed already. Similar to here.

I don't want this discussion to devolve into an FAA radio interference flame war but the risk from general consumer electronic/mobile devices on airplanes has been minimal and most instruments are well shielded against RF interference.

I would suspect most seasoned and knowledgeable pilots don't worry too much about Mr Businessman in first class on his iPhone or Tablet using 5G.

On the other hand I have seen more than one flight attendant absolutely lose their marbles because someone was texting during announcements or while taxiing.

Aside from the fact that someone talking on their phone during a flight would be terribly annoying, the biggest issue with active phones on airplanes was how it messed with ground cell towers. There was fair amount of handoff the towers had to do with traveling passengers at 30,000 feet. At least in the earlier days it was problematic to deal with. I'd love a wireless communications engineer to chime in on that part.

What is your proposition here? That these incidents aren't actually occurring as reported, or that in air fires just aren't a big deal? Eventually such a fire will end in a disaster, we're really just playing with probability. In aviation a lot of investment is made in mitigating much less likely problems, but we seem to be happy to accept the proliferation of potentially dangerous devices I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but it is interesting.

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

"I get what you're saying about seat belts. But when I think about all the hours I've driven, the thousands upon thousands of miles ... something should have happened by this point."

If cell phones posed a danger to flight safety, somewhere a plane should have crashed already. Similar to here.

The logic here seems to be: "Factor X turned out to be a false alarm. Therefore this new factor Y you're talking about -- completely unrelated to X -- well, it's probably a false alarm as well."

> If cell phones posed a danger to flight safety,

... the demand to have them be switched off or put on airplane mode would've been stringently controlled. It's mostly an FCC issue where a mobile device flying above would try to connect to many base stations.

If the airlines really care, they can tell passengers that leaving the phone radio on will drain their batteries hard as the devices will be desperately trying to regain connectivity, that would get many people to turn these things off/onto airplane mode.

We've come full circle as a society. Pressurized steam used to power everything, created by burning coal and wood. Then we went to oil based fuels for transportation and grid electricity and natural gas for most other energy needs. Now we are back to pressurized battery electricity created by coal, gas, hydro.

Thermal runaway issues will increase as more lithium devices malfunction and age, as the endless electric scooter and other battery fires demonstrate.

https://youtu.be/4IrN9MTj5YI The 1948 Steam Locomotive Boiler Explosion Outside of Chillicothe, Ohio

"Researchers craft a fully edible battery" (2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35885696

My house is old enough to have (currently redundant) fireplaces. Reading stories like this, I wonder if it would be worth converting them into flameproof storage for battery powered devices.

Probably not.

You'd have to leave the flue open (there goes heating/cooling) and regularly pay to clean it to make sure nothing nested inside or it won't vent. They don't smother either, so airtight boxes are out too.

Focus on fire suppression/escape strategy. The one that burns your house down is going to be some freebie gadget someone else lost in your couch, that you didn't know about to account for.

You can buy “burn cabinets” designed for this but I wonder if a fire safe would work.

If it can keep fire out, can it keep fire in?

Can the problem be theoretically solved by disallowing any charged batteries on board? No energy means no explosions.

It's funny people are worried about lithium batteries when lighters are still allowed on planes...

US airlines only allow common lighters. Over many years those haven't been a problem in practice. Torch lighters are prohibited.

https://www.united.com/ual/en/us/fly/travel/baggage/dangerou...

If a huge fire breaks out on a plain mid flight, you realistically have no chance of survival right? So instead of trying to survive only to get burned to death you should inhale as much fumes as possible to pass out and die quickly before you are burned?

It seems somewhat tragic to me that you believe “inhaling as much fumes as possible” would even be an option. Human psychology doesn’t really work like that.

The logic of inhaling fumes is not much farther removed from the logic of jumping out of a burning skyscraper. Anything to avoid burning to death.

If your comment was aimed on a 'Black Mirror' irony level, you need to hone your delivery. Be pithier.

Not at all. Fires are survivable, and the vast majority of aviation fires have ended without total airframe loss.

Remember: everybody in a small captive space is a firefighter. And the chief firefighters are the people who we call "flight attendants". Their man job is to prevent the scenario you describe; they are nice enough to serve us drinks when that job is not required of them.

Flight attendants and air traffic controllers have saved many, many lives in the past century and are barely recognized for it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloha_Airlines_Flight_243 Ended with one fatality.

Stay with the plane.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com