The last place you want a lithium battery fire is in the confined space of a passenger aircraft
All these electronic devices are powered by lithium batteries
An AvSax lithium battery fire mitigation bag
A passenger plane had to make an emergency landing after unruly passengers threw a mobile phone which then caught fire.
The Avianca airline plane with 161 passengers on board had just taken off from Bogota in Colombia to Sao Paulo Guarulhos in Brazil when the unruly passengers hurled the phone.
The impact must have damaged the lithium battery which then sent the phone into what’s known as thermal runaway, causing it to overheat and catch fire.
The plane was still climbing at the time so the pilot stopped the climb and returned to Bogota.
According to the Aviation Herald: “The airline reported two passengers had become unruly and threw a mobile phone that heated up as a result. The aircraft burned off fuel and the disruptive passengers were handed to authorities.”
Overall, the passengers faced a delay of more than five hours after the incident on July 17, 2024.
This is the latest in a number of lithium battery fires on aircraft. There have been 485 verified lithium battery incidents recorded by the Federal Aviation Administration in the USA from March 2006 to April 2024 but figures have rocketed in recent years and have been running at an average around one a week since 2017.
These figures are just for the USA which suggests hundreds more incidents have happened elsewhere in the world but have never been reported. No other regulatory authority releases lithium battery incident figures, including the Civil Aviation Authority in the UK.
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. This can cause a lithium battery fire to flare repeatedly and, because they burn at such a high temperature, they are very difficult to put out.
This is why thousands of planes worldwide are now equipped with AvSax lithium battery fire mitigation bags so they are prepared to deal with a lithium battery incident on board any passenger aircraft.
AvSax specialist project manager Jessica Bailey said: “This Avianca incident shows how easy it can be to damage a lithium battery and send it into thermal runaway. Hundreds of items powered by lithium batteries are taken onto every passenger flight worldwide which is why these kind of incidents are now happening.
“It’s also why cabin crew safety briefings before each flight now feature a warning about the hazards of lithium batteries and passengers should immediately alert the crew if their personal electronic device overheats or gets lost in the seat. If the seat is moved, the device can easily become crushed, sending the lithium battery into thermal runaway.”
AvSax are designed to continually cool an overheating battery but are made from military grade material so should the battery explode it will be contained within the bag.
AvSax are now on board around 16,750 aircraft operated by more than 100 airline companies worldwide, including some of the best-known names in the aviation industry. It also means that if an incident happens on a plane the AvSax will deal with it so the plane can continue to its final scheduled destination without having to make an emergency landing which causes huge expense for the airline and immense disruption to passengers.
AvSax won the Queen’s Award for Enterprise in the UK for their innovation and were devised by Environmental Defence Systems Ltd based in Huddersfield, Yorkshire, England. The Queen’s Award is the highest accolade any business can get.
For more information on AvSax go to www.avsax.com
