If I understood this correctly, this is based on a higher (but unknown to consumers?) chance that the Galaxy Note 7 's battery could explode during flight and catch fire. Then, what would be considered a chance high enough that a laptop battery's explosion would not be a concern? Would it be safer to lock these phones into an explosion-proof box before they onboard the flight?
Some rough baggage packing under the plane that damages a laptop battery in the gate checked bag. Every time I fly I watch people gate check bags with laptops and more even after the announcement to "remove all lithium batteries & electronics".
I wish more people understood how dangerous this could be and would take 3 minutes to take electronics out and carry them on board with them.
Me too. I fly a lot, and the thought of a damaged battery, or somebody leaving their notebook in sleep mode, packed in a suitcase of flammable clothes with all of the other luggage gives me anxiety at times.
If I have both laptops with me, I check the heavier one, but take the battery out and carry it on.
I fly from Hong Kong to the US quite a bit (16 hours), so alternate landing sites are few and far between. That, and everyone seems to be carrying a Samsung Galaxy or iPhone from HK.
Clearly not. Mac users are used to their laptops actually going to sleep when they shut the lid.
My work HP, however, is regularly scorching hot when I get home as it's been on in my backpack the whole time despite me shutting the lid and despite the instruction to 'go to sleep when the lid is closed'. How there's not some sort of thermal cutoff I do not know, but I know for a fact that there is not.
Edit: by 'regularly' I mean a few times a year. Still far, far too many.
If this is not caused by the Windows issue mentioned by TeMPOraL, I might have another explanation:
My former notebook (Acer Timeline 1810TZ) used to wake up from a press on any keyboard button, which I was unable to change.
The issue here is that with sufficient pressure (e.g. when I was running with the device in a messenger bag), the lid would bend enough to actually press a key and wake up the machine.
My hackish solution was a script that would automatically put the laptop back to sleep a few seconds after waking up, which I then manually killed after intentionally waking the device.
It may not be the fault of HP per se. Windows itself tended to cause this on every laptop I ever used by randomly deciding it needs to wake up the machine and check for updates.
AFAIK pretty much all Intel CPUs do have a thermal cutoff, and I expect AMDs do as well.
Unfortunately, it's close to 100 degrees. It's only there to prevent damage to the CPU, not the rest of the system (or your back). It also isn't guaranteed to shut down the laptop, just the CPU.
So it really depends on how well the motherboard manufacturer did their job.
That and I have lived in SE Asia where there's a lot of handcrafted fabrics, foods, and other unbelievable things checked-in and carried on luggage once you're flying on a plane not bound for a major city. Just look at the Customs line in JFK or Newark to see what they pull out of people's luggage if you're coming from Asia or Africa. I can't speak to other points of origin.
I don't know of any reports of fires in luggage holds.
I know there are fire suppression devices as mandated by the FAA. It used to be just containment, but they changed it to suppression thank goodness.
Nonetheless, I vote for carry-on where you can see it before a single-point failure occurs with the fire suppression system unseen in the luggage hold. I can imagine the fire suppression system either not being charged or armed from my related experience with safety issues in the hospitality industry.
Your comment was after mine above. Never? I wouldn't rush judgement. Here is an incident of a lithium battery in a camera bag in an overhead bin causing a fire and subsequent return to departure airport [1], and another of an air-purifier exploding in the cabin causing burns to one passenger and hospitalization of some others due to smoke inhalation [2].
And here's one where the crew of a UPS cargo plane lost their lives due to a fire with rigin located near a pallet containing some lithium batteries in the main deck cargo area. Granted fire suppression was not there I think, but you get the picture [3].
I have not worked in the airline industry, but the above incidents were reported, and were highly-visible, occurring in the passenger cabin. I wonder if there are any unreported incidents of the fire suppression system going off in the cargo/baggage hold? I'll have to read through the source material more.
I know it's speculative, but I say it having worked in a high-risk job where minor incidents like paper cuts and stapler accidents were reported by the front office, but much more serious incidents occurred in the underwater work we did, and did not get duly reported. Safety is a diligence game, and we tend to get jaded by daily 'minor' incidents until a big one occurs and rattles everyone to muster, or it sees the light of the press & public.
It seems unwise to gate-check a bag with a laptop anyway, given the way the luggage handlers throw bags around. Gate-checking a roller board suitcase with clothing is one thing, but I wouldn't check anything fragile or particularly expensive.
I flew out of Beijing recently, and there all check-in baggage was immediately scanned for batteries. If they found what they thought were batteries, you had to remove them from the bag and take it on carry-on.
Sometimes there is no choice, e.g. in the case when I carry two or three laptops for work reasons, and the weight limit of carry-on baggage means only one fits in hand luggage.
A laptop packed properly in a hard bag full of clothes isn't very likely to take any hit, though. If the baggage handlers run over it by a truck, then it may be damaged, but not in plane.
What airline actually checks the weight limit on carry-on bags? I've never had mine checked for weight and I carry a backpack that looks like it shouldn't meet the size guidelines, but does.
It depends on the route, but I saw this done on many flights from mainland China to Europe, on several airlines.
(And considering the amount of carry-on luggage that people routinely bring in Chinese domestic flights, this is not surprising; there's a limit to what the overhead lockers can take, not to mention that pathetic slot where your feet should be.)
Not OP, but anecdotally, this happens a lot outside the US. The most recent airline to make me weigh my carry on was Qantas, but I don't think it has ever been required of me within the US.
Ironically, for people who travel a lot, the exact opposite happens and we are frequently "encouraged" to use our baggage allotment to reduce courier costs for the company.
Particularly for confidential things, or when in real hurry, I really can't ship it, I have to carry it along.
A typical case is that we have software in development, I'm about to demonstrate it to a customer tomorrow, and before I leave for the trip, I'm making the final build and tweaking of demonstration data set at office and installing in the laptop that I use as a demo server.
By the time I'm ready, the DHL shipments for the day have gone and if I ship it, it would be there one day after my demo. So it has to be in my luggage.
Yes, checked-in luggage may also be lost and delayed, but with direct flights, I'll be fine as long as I'm not going to CDG (Paris).
Even for gate-checked bags, the gate agent is supposed to announce that lithium batteries cannot be in the bag, and should probably confirm that with the passenger when tagging the bag.
Some people have no idea what battery chemistry is in their laptops. Especially for models where the battery isn't even removable. I don't mean this as a criticism, it's just not necessarily something that everyone notices.
Are you saying there are laptops with batteries that don't fall in this dangerous category, or are you saying people don't know that all laptop batteries fall in this category?
I know people that still believe that the power for cordless drills gets transmitted from the charger to the drill via something like wifi. They're super-careful not to stand in the LOS between the drill and the charger.
I definitely hear the announcements a lot... whether or not they follow up "e-cigarettes and spare lithium batteries" with "and other electronics" or "such as those found in personal electronics" is very hit and miss.
At my regional airport they just hand out the tags and don't ask any other questions or offer any other guidance to each individual passenger. It's just the one main blanket announcement.
I think unless they are checking for them to the same extent that they are checking for liquids and weapons in carry on it is likely that plenty of people aren't following the rules either intentionally or from ignorance.
>I wish more people understood how dangerous this could be and would take 3 minutes to take electronics out and carry them on board with them.
All kinds of electronics are in the cargo, including tons of packages of electronics mailed to users in another city/country.
Why would it be any more dangerous to have them in cargo than on board the passenger seats? Obviously cargo has better wall protection, and automatic fire extinguish systems...
There are a lot of mixed reviews of the effectiveness of halon on li-ion batteries on fire. It definitely failed on actual battery cargo. One battery in luggage may be stoppable but I wouldn't want to find out first hand.
A while back I checked a second, relatively bulky laptop that I was carrying for a new employee. As I understood it the current rule is that you shouldn't check a laptop battery that isn't plugged in but it is fine as part of the laptop?
On another flight I also checked a power bank before learning of the rules surrounding them, which depending on capacity could be a lot more dangerous.
I'm not sure about specifics there. It's an interesting thing to think about though... whether a battery with exposed leads has more potential to short vs being attached to something. (I would assume the exposed leads would be worse.)
You never ever leave leads exposed. That is absolutely the fastest way to start a fire. Either pack it with the equipment, or make damn sure you have some industrial covers for those leads.
And yes, I have had people do a piss poor job securing their leads, and then have the equipment rub up against metal, and "Poof" - instant smoke. (Thankfully the luggage was with us, so we were able to stop it before it became a fire)
The risk is only while the Samsung device is charging (as I recall?). As for other devices, I suppose they could issue the warning "please do not hit your device with a hammer during flight".
Fun fact I read recently: more than a million people are in the air at any one time, globally. If laptop batteries exploded even rarely, we'd hear about it.
Nice find. No doubt batteries are a hazard particularly when exposed/not installed in devices as many of these examples describe... batteries found squashed between the seat and so on. If we remove cases of smoking loose batteries, or crushed devices in luggage, the failure rate is extremely low.
It depends on the mode of failure, but these problems happen when a battery is stressed. Charging or discharging at a high rate especially with high temperatures and during/after physical stress can cause runaways.
Protection circuitry is supposed to prevent runaways, something is obviously failing. It could be an overheating component or faulty high voltage protection circuits or simply just bad thermal design.
Every story I've read has either had an incident while the Phone charging. Any reports of incidents while the device was simply being used? Or even more unlikely, powered down?
Note that the the FAA is just encouraging you to (1) Not check them in luggage (where nobody can put a fire out easily), (2) Not charge them, (3) Use them inflight.
I haven't seen any problems with the phone in a powered down state - anybody else?
The batteries don't "explode" – they self-combust.
Better to have the phone out in the open (so you can see it catching fire) and throw it in a bucket of cold water – the water will absorb most of the heat and prevent the fire getting out of control (it won't extinguish the fire, which will continue in the water).
Rechargable Lithium batteries contain surprisingly limited amounts of it. And its not in there in its elemental form anyway. Lithium batteries burn because of the potential energy they have after charging.
You can drive nails through discharged Lithium Ion batteries without much happening.
Please don't do this, when rechargable lithium batteries are "discharged", they are not discharged fully, doing so would damage the battery. Charging circuits have a "cutoff" voltage where they report the battery to be empty, but there is still plenty of stored energy in the cells.
