Originally Posted by
Phantom Flyer
AINSafety today (1/21/13) printed a report stating that since March 20, 2012, there have been
132 incidents of either an overheat or fire involving lithium-ion batteries in the U.S. Most of the reported incidents occurred in either a cargo aircraft (makes the freight dogs wag their tails) or with passenger personal devices. The JAL Dreamliner fire at BOS is the latest exception. That's a
LOT of incidents
in less than four months.
Y'All be careful.
This I believe is the most serious threat to our crews, passengers, and aircraft. We've all been in the simulators where they give us a cargo fire and we conveniently have a place to land within 15 minutes and everyone survives. But we are kidding ourselves if we believe these situations are always going to work out this way.
UPS and Asiana Cargo lost 747s due to fires presumably to lithium batteries. UPS lost a DC-8 in PHL after the fire started on final and nearly consumed it before landing. It is only a matter of time until this happens on board a passenger aircraft.