A pilot with an AvSax fire containment bag
Many airline companies around the world are now investing in fire containment bags to deal with problems caused by overheating electronic devices brought on board by passengers.
Hundreds of small devices such as mobile phones and laptops powered by lithium ion batteries are taken on to every flight worldwide each day and some do overheat. AvSax fire containment bags are by now the most popular worldwide to deal with such incidents.
Many airline companies now carry fire containment bags in the passenger cabin to deal with any overheating batteries. In the worst scenario the lithium batteries can go into what’s known as thermal runaway when one cell overheating in a battery 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.
AvSax are the world’s best-selling aircraft fire containment bags by far and are now on more than 15,373 aircraft operated by 75 airline companies across the world and have been used 32 times to deal with emergencies since the start of 2017. AvSax won the prestigious Queen’s Award for Enterprise in the UK in 2018.
One major international airline that uses them says: “AvSax provides a simple, cost-effective solution for lithium battery event mitigation. No complex grabber tools. No overly-complex extinguisher systems. A cooling method that meets and exceeds national and international regulatory recommendations.”
The clever way the AvSax deploys also means the passenger’s device is not damaged if it stops overheating once it’s been put in the bag.
The airline states: “While the majority of events were actual smoke/fire/fume events, there have also been preventative deployments when the customer has alerted cabin crew of possible PED battery failure. This system allows us to remedy this type of event while preventing damage to the customer’s device, e.g. not drowning a device by water submersion. This is a customer win.”
It also means planes in the airline’s fleet don’t have to make costly diversions if an electronic device overheats on board … or gains vital time to divert if that’s needed.
The airline says: “We have realised substantial operational savings by being able to deploy a system that the flight crew and dispatcher know will extinguish an offending device and provide additional time should a diversion response be called for.”
