UK Pilots Want Lithium Battery Powered Devices In the Cabin 69
AmiMoJo writes: The professional association and trade union of UK pilots The British Airline Pilots Association (BALPA), has asked airlines to require travelers to carry devices that run on lithium-based batteries with them in the passenger cabin instead of in checked luggage. The union hoping to address what it considers a significant potential safety risk, baggage fires going unnoticed in the hold. BALPA explains, "when they short circuit, [they] have a tendency to burst into high intensity fires, which are difficult to extinguish." They further point out, "lithium battery fires have caused at least three cargo aircraft crashes and the UN safety regulator has banned a specific type of lithium battery (lithium metal) from being carried as cargo on passenger aircraft."
Re:There will be more crashes (Score:4, Insightful)
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what would be the point of an omniscient and omnipotent being giving humans what is supposedly a free will if said deity was going to be petty and actually try to micromanage human behavior via swift vengeance for every infraction?
If you stop assuming a "good" god than Abrahamic religions will make a lot more sense to you.
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Great (Score:5, Funny)
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It can happen at home too.
My house burned down, and the fire started in a battery pack.
I suspect that there have been many house fires caused by these things.
Don't leave them charging overnight or when you are not at home.
They are like a bomb waiting to go off.
Your smartphone can do a lot, but there is no smoke detector app.
Yes there is [nest.com]. Though I don't need a smoke detector app on my phone to hear the smoke detector in my bedroom go off if my phone catches on fire at night.
And it can't put out a fire.
Depends on the size of the fire. My phone could put out a match.
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Unless your vibrators are as big as a Dewalt drill, I would think you can do without Lithium cells for a few days.
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I don't understand? (Score:1)
I thought we all kept our stuff in the cloud and we can just 3D print a new device at the destination?
Have I been misinformed or am I just a Luddite?
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Yes.
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I bet they can't produce their American Birth Certificates either.
Please sir can I have more mass! (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a laudable suggestion with three small caveats, assuming you don't ban our iPhones, laptops all together :-
1/ If we are required to carry these batteries in the cabin then a mass dispensation needs to be made to accommodate them and what they are powering if non-removeable (I've had situations in the past where I needed to check my laptop power supply and batteries to get under the cabin Mass allocation)
2/ TSA etc cannot require that devices be activatable to be carried as a dead battery would mean nowhere else to carry them. (To be honest I nere understood this rule as all previous instances of 'converted' electronic devices used on planes would have passed this test but not the chemical sniffers.)
3/ If they do catch fire in the cabin, what you gonna do in the short period of time before toxic fumes start killing passengers. My suggestion, get an empty food trolley and keep duct-tape on hand.
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Of course you can have more mass. Just not lithium batteries (the kids might swallow them). Take lead acid batteries instead.
Now I know what to do with all those old 2V storage batteries I was planning on sending to scrap - just hook up eight in series so I can continue to use my laptop the next time I fly.
Sure there'll be some inconveniences, like getting them on and off the plane - but if I weld a bigger base onto a fork trolley I can just wheel them on and off, and park them in the aisle. I know there'l
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AGMs are perfectly fine aboard aircraft [google.com].
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Never had a problem with carrying lithium batteries on an airplane. Carried v-mount and many others, as long as the terminals have tape over them or have a case so they do not short they allow them onboard. Also, you can buy batteries (alkaline or lithium AA's for example, even digital camera batteries) in duty free and carry them on-board, this is after check-in and security.
The logic escapes me, (Score:2)
Is it some devious logic that if the battery kills the owner first, there would be some justice? Or it would gradually dawn on to the passengers that these batteries have very high energy storage densities and are dangerous, slowly they would stop carrying them?
Re:The logic escapes me, (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd be interested to know what the current standard for fire detection in the cargo area is; and how difficult and costly it would be to achieve better early warning.
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From http://batteryuniversity.com/l... [batteryuniversity.com] (I looked it up because I was thinking the same as you did):
"If the fire occurs in an airplane, the FAA instructs flight attendants to use water or pop soda. Water-based products are most readily available and are appropriate since Li-ion contains very little lithium metal that would react with water. Water also cools the adjacent area and prevents the fire from spreading. Many research laboratories and factories also use water to put out Li-ion battery fires."
This doe
not all Lithium batteries - (Score:2)
LiFePO4 are a class of lithium batteries which do not have this thermal runaway problem. The disadvantage is that they have less energy density when new, but because other lithium battery technologies quickly lose capacity, this disadvantage is eliminated at a year of age, and thereafter, LiFePO4 has a higher energy density. LiFePO4 batteries are what should have been used in the Boeing 787 in the first place, in order to prevent the problems that grounded the fleet.
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Sadly they are expensive as hell. I really hope the prices drop on them and adoption takes off.
first cheeked bag free will help as well (Score:2)
first cheeked bag free will help as well as people will be taking see stuff in side the main cabin
How to Miss the Point Completely in Only Ten Words (Score:5, Insightful)
No. UK pilots want lithium batteries OUT of the cargo hold. They don't have some odd desire to populate the cabin with lithium batteries.
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Fuck you. I want to be able to take a fucking camera on holiday and I don't think bringing it is a huge risk to life and limb.
And so you can:
http://www.leslikescameras.com... [leslikescameras.com]
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... and most watches
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modern automobile keys...
Hold on! (Score:2)
Gadgets with Lithium batteries in the cabin instead of the hold. I'm okay with that. Anything that goes in the hold is likely to get stolen. Heathrow* didn't earn it's nickname Thiefrow for nothing!
* London Heathrow.
Obligatory xkcd (Score:2)
In a weird opposite meaning, https://xkcd.com/651/ [xkcd.com]
three cargo aircraft crashes [citation needed] (Score:2)
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
2? 3? Not sure - plenty of "implicated but not proven" or "something caught fire, landed safely, nobody hurt but extensive damage".
This is an interesting read, though - lengthy report of incidents, including minor (e.g. smoking bag before being loaded) between March 1991 and April 2015:
http://www.faa.gov/about/offic... [faa.gov]
Did I miss something? (Score:2)
Did I miss something? the part where planes are dropping out of the air left and right due to someone's iPhone in the hold?
I think it's one thing to talk about say... shipping a palate or two of LiON batteries in the hold of a passenger airliner? sure, ban it, but I think this is a serious over-reaction to a problem that really is not exactly the most pressing thing threatening us today.
Um, fire suppression anyone? (Score:1)
Perhaps I am naive, but I just assumed airplane cargo holds had some sort of fire-suppression mechanism.
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Well... apparently, not always. In 2010, "the National Transportation Safety Board had asked the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to install automatic fire extinguisher systems in the holds of cargo aircraft. UPS Airlines followed FAA regulations, which stated that pilots should depressurize the main cabin and climb to an altitude of at least 20,000 feet (6,100 m) upon detection of a fire so as to deprive the flames of oxygen."
In other words, the procedure was to climb to high altitude and depressurize