Mobile phone charger catches fire on board passenger jet

A mobile phone charger caught fire as a passenger plane was coming into land.

The drama happened as an Air Canada Airbus A320 was approaching Fort Lauderdale International Airport in Florida following a flight from Montreal on Christmas Day.

According to the Aviation Herald news website, a passenger told the flight attendants his mobile phone battery charger had caught fire and they quickly doused the fire with water and then put the charger into a special containment bag.

The aircraft landed safely a few minutes later and no emergency needed to be declared as the problem had been dealt with so efficiently.

Fires like this are caused by what’s known as thermal runaway. This happens when 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.

Incidents of thermal runaway are on the rise. There have been 268 involving lithium batteries reported to the Federal Aviation Administration in the USA since 2006.

Many airlines now carry specialist fire containment bags to minimise the risk.

AvSax are the world’s best-selling aircraft fire containment bags by far and are now on more than 15,373 aircraft operated by 80 airline companies. They have been used 33 times to deal with emergencies since the start of 2017 and every time they have been deployed the aircraft has been able to complete its journey safely with no need to divert or make an emergency landing. Diversions can be very costly to the airline company and can even run into hundreds of thousands of pounds.

AvSax won the prestigious Queen’s Award for Enterprise in the UK in 2018.

To find out more go to www.avsax.com or call 00 44 (0) 1484 641009 anytime.