dmac7273

To be clear, if a fire broke out right next to you, you would just sit there and not react? Cause that doesn't sound like a normal human reaction.

Sudden fire? Move away from it.

ryw

Glad OP got through the situation. Even knowing that crews are well trained for situations like these, I can't help but feel that I'd be frightened in a similar position, even if on the ground.

In the big picture, it's probably better for the fire to happen in the cabin where the crew can attend to it, rather than in the cargo hold. On Monday going through MSP, while waiting at my gate, I think I heard the most announcements about removing lithium batteries & e-bag batteries from gatechecked bags that I'd ever heard. For good reason though.

(I wonder if the passenger in 1B just deplaned like normal at the gate, or if they needed to get a statement, etc. from him)

xolinlevh

A fire occurred on a plane. Trust me....every agency that could be notified has already been.

ricktoronto

I am thinking Delta knows, as it was their flight and their pilot that chucked it out the window.

kennycrudup

No, I'm saying I'd at least try and do something at least, not just flee the scene (and (maybe?) move away from the closest exit) and potentially block the passage of someone who can actually put it out- suppose everyone in the vicinity had done what OP did?

"Costanza/Scott", indeed.

mot29

Fire inside vs fire outside but I watched the Air Disasters episode about QF32, the 380 engine failure and the subsequent fire. Once they landed that plane it took about an hour before the passengers were allowed off - between cooling the landing gear, covering the leaking fuel and getting the #1 engine shut down.
Just thinking about not being able to get off of a plane with a fire inside or outside is frightening.

Marylou

indufan

I am really interested in what you are going to say to Delta in a letter that will improve safety. And it is a dead serious question.

zoned_post_meridiem

Oh c'mon. Battery fires aren't simple events. If you know, with certainty, how to extinguish one, do help. If you don't, especially when you know there are people nearby who do, get out of the way and let them handle it. OP throwing a blanket over it or a bottle of water at it (both reasonable, though in this case wrong, reactions to seeing a fire) would have made this worse.

ethernal

This. Exactly. The best thing OP could have done is what s(he) did - get out of the way.

There is an entire crew there that is trained and capable to handle this situation (the fact that 30+ of these events happen yearly in the US and it doesn't even make the news shows that the training and extinguishing approach works).

Chemical fires are not like fires you're familiar with. As one perhaps archetypal example, many well-intentioned people have gotten serious burns - and even died - from trying to put out a grease fire with water (water is actually great to douse battery fires if you can completely submerge it - but it is not feasible to pick it up at maximum temperature which is why an extinguisher is used first).

The best thing OP could have done is to do exactly what s/he did - and that is get out of the way.

Tomphot

ethernal

I'm not surprised. There are some dumpster fire charger packs that are sold in China. If the failure rate of an average charger in the US is 1 per 10 billion uses, China's is probably closer to 1 in 10 million. I made those numbers up, but I'm sure from an order-of-magnitude risk perspective it's not far off (not so much because high quality chargers in China are worse, but more that the bottom 10-20% are just absolute trash).

At least in the US there are generally some product safety regulations that make lithium ion batteries generally safe (although unfortunately shoddy products are not really caught by customs and fly by night sellers in the US are happy to sell to unsuspecting customers).

Unfortunately even the safest of products may get compromised if the cells get physically damaged so even "safe" chargers can run into issues. If your battery is swelling or your battery pack becomes seriously dented/deformed, you should dispose of it (at a proper facility).

Exec_Plat

lol
Sure. You should list all the US lion battery manufacturers... and do tell us about all the US safety regulations that protect us (and that arent applicable in China)


More lol

Amazon is a vendor. There are cheap crap batteris sold everywhere. You wanna believe "amazon" is the problem, go for it.

I can buy Dell and Anker power components off amazon...unsafe? Just silly.

SightseeMC

I'm really trying to figure out ANYTHING the OP was supposed to do besides what she/he did.

1. Sit and watch. Probably in the way or at least OP is a concern for the crew dealing with the fire.
2. Help extinguish. With no chemical fire fighting experience and/or tools. So...get in the way.
3. Direct all others in orderly exit from first class, leaving as last passenger. Which, given she/he was bulkhead, OP was probably last out anyway. So she/he was to take control of the cabin evacuation as opposed to the flight crew?
4. Get out of the cabin and out of the way. Duh.

Honesty, attacking OP for leaving the scene of a chemical fire on a plane may be the hottest take I've ever seen, pun intended.

daloosh

Since you are serious, while it seems OP did not know the airlines' protocol for reporting such a fire, since s/he was probably one of the two closest people to the fire, s/he may have recollection of the beginning of the fire that no one had, for example s/he mentioned the length of the original flame, the sound of it starting, some sense of the time it took for the device to fill the F cabin with smoke, and that the fellow passenger had two batteries. And perhaps the cabin or ground crew or firefighters asked these questions at the time, we don't know.