On July 12, some passengers were still boarding their American Airlines flights. (AAL) flight to Miami from San Francisco International Airport (SFO) when smoke coming from a passenger's bag prompted an immediate evacuation.
The cause of the fire was apparently one that airlines have been warning about for years: a laptop battery. He told a local branch ABC News said the cabin had begun to smell “like burning wires” and that the odor grew stronger as passengers searched for their seats.
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San Francisco Fire Department crews rushed to extinguish the fire, but in the chaos that ensued as several people attempted to exit the plane at the same time in a desperate race using evacuation slides, three passengers suffered minor injuries. Everyone on board the flight was taken back to the terminal and had to wait until Flight 2045 was cleared to take off.
'A slight stampede, people shouting 'fire in the back'
Some of the videos of the incident shared on social media showed the fire crew placing the engulfed laptop in water to extinguish the flames.
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“Someone's bag caught fire in the cabin of AA2045 at SFO an hour before we took off and it wasn't even a Boeing. (licensed in letters) “airplane,” Chris Vogt, a software engineer on board the flight, x.com/C1V0/status/1811861944028291549″>wrote on the social media platform formerly known as twitter. “There was a bit of a stampede, people were yelling 'fire in the back' and running for the doors, but everyone was supposedly okay.”
In a statement regarding the incident, American Airlines confirmed that “It was reported that there was smoke inside a customer's purse.”
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This is why phone and laptop batteries catch fire so often on planes
“The crew quickly removed the bag and all customers exited the aircraft,” the airline wrote. “We thank the crew for their professionalism and apologize to our customers for the inconvenience.”
Most modern phones and laptops contain a type of lithium battery that is particularly prone to overheating and short-circuiting in a chemical reaction known as thermal runaway. While such a situation rarely causes more than a momentary shock on the ground, the fire that can break out in a confined environment on board an aircraft poses a much greater risk.
In February 2023, a United Airlines UAL flight from San Diego to Newark was diverted back to its destination. Shortly after takeoff “after a customer's battery caught fire.
While the US government has Heavy occasionally In light of the option to ban laptops and large batteries on board aircraft, current Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) rules only require that all products containing lithium batteries be kept inside the aircraft cabin rather than checked in as baggage. But since nearly everyone carries a cell phone on board, cabin fires are bound to occur periodically.
“The device may have been subjected to thermal, electrical or physical abuse before being placed in the bag without the passenger realizing the potential threat posed by these items,” the FAA said. wrote In its lithium fire protocol guide for airline crews, it states that “in the cabin, the bag may be placed under a seat or in the overhead bin, where the battery could experience thermal runaway and ignite the surrounding contents.”
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