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British Airways B789 smoke in cabin, phone stuck in seat
- CaliforniaKarl 3y agoAs mentioned in the comments for the post, and as I can remember in recent flights, if you drop your phone you’re supposed to alert the cabin crew immediately. Now I understand why.
- cassonmars 3y agoWas thinking the same thing after a recent flight - “huh, this is new”
- laserlight 3y agoHaving read the article, I still don't understand. How is a phone getting stuck a problem?
- mozman 3y agoThe mechanical linkage of the seat can crush the phone and cause the battery to ignite. It would be helpful if the announcements eluded to this, as a pax I’m not going to want to bother anyone especially if i think it’s just another dumb pointless rule.
- mlyle 3y agoIt's a wacky thing, in that --- on the one side, you want to convince passengers the rule is serious... But you also don't really want to mention fire as you're beginning a flight.
- throwbadubadu 3y agoThe tickets are bought already, and you mention also the cabin pressure loss, what to do in case of an emergency landing and watering.. most airlines here also pretty explicit about battery devices going smokey, and noone freaks out, so that is really not the concern?
- CaptainZapp 3y agoWell, anything remotely refering to flight problems is cut out of inflight movies. Even Qantas cut the scene in Rainman where Raymond histerically doesn't want to board an airplane since Qantas is the only carrier that never had a fatality.
- mlyle 3y ago> The tickets are bought already, The concern isn't really revenue loss. > and noone freaks out, Plenty of people freak out and create safety issues and distractions. Anything you say during the safety briefing, you're making a tradeoff between slightly preparing sane, attentive passengers better and increasing the worry of anxious passengers.
- dotancohen 3y ago> especially if i think it’s just another dumb pointless rule FAA rules are written in blood. They may be overbearing and often tedious, but they are far from dumb and pointless. Those rules are from other government agencies.
- alvah 3y agoIs the "all devices must be put in flight mode" rule written in blood? Everything I've heard suggests it's not necessary. I agree with your general point though.
- rich_sasha 3y agoI think it is written with blood from a scratch. I spoke to a pilot about it a while back, he said in the early days (either because of less EM shielding or different phone design or something else - not sure) this really interfered with e.g. the landing radio aids. While it never caused a crash, it was mighty annoying and distracting, and in the wrong circumstances could have lead to a crash. AFAIK it never did, but could have done.
- NobodyNada 3y agoNote that the rule about mobile devices is an FCC rule, not an FAA rule.
- tomjakubowski 3y agoIt is both an FAA rule and an FCC rule https://www.faa.gov/travelers/fly_safe/information https://www.faa.gov/travelers/fly_safe/information
- ShadowBanThis01 3y agoHe's not saying the rule is pointless. He's pointing out that the announcements FAIL to explain that this is an important safety issue, leading passengers to BELIEVE that it's no big deal.
- 3y ago
- cperciva 3y agoAir Canada announcements specifically say "inform a member of our crew immediately as it may pose a fire hazard". I guess it varies from airline to airline.
- nrb 3y agoAnecdotally, United has been including a warning about the the phone’s battery becoming damaged in their pre-takeoff briefing for a while now.
- stevenwoo 3y agoI imagine one can use the movable bits of a seat as a lever and break a phone in two accidentally leading to an open lithium battery.
- dotancohen 3y agoHow plausible is it that somebody would crush a phone deliberately, considering that it involves only items already allowed on board? Or a team of people doing this throughout the aircraft?
- cperciva 3y agoEasy if you know what you're doing. Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/651/ https://xkcd.com/651/
- stevenwoo 3y agoA good point. Maybe it just shows a.) how much of what we are required to do is security theater b.) that it does not reliably work in making an uncontrollable fire so that is why it is not used as instrument of terror. I've accidentally opened a couple of batteries while repairing phones and they did not burst into flames, though I remember furiously googling and putting them in a bucket of water outside after a minute or two.
- thiscatis 3y agoLess of an issue in economy seats seats but in new business class seats or suites there’s the possibility for a lot of crushing and grinding of the battery of the phone with the mechanical moving components of the seat. I had it happen to me once but as instructed didn’t move the seat (had to move to another one for landing as it was stuck in the lie flat position). After landing the maintenance crew had to completely dismantle the back of the seat but they found the phone. The pilots and crew were obviously a bit annoyed as they couldn’t disembark the aircraft with me still on board. But much better result than having to declare PAN PAN.
- khuey 3y ago> I had it happen to me once but as instructed didn’t move the seat (had to move to another one for landing as it was stuck in the lie flat position). How does that work on a completely full flight?
- cperciva 3y agoTwo ways -- first, as already a couple other people mentioned, the battery could get crushed in a hinge; and second, a phone which is turned on and wedged between two cushions might overheat. This second danger is why modern phones are required to detect overheating and preemptively shut down -- but it's going to be decades before the FAA will want to assume that everyone has phones with that safety mechanism built in.
- stephen_g 3y agoSpecifically I think the issue is that if people drop the phone while reclined and then return the seat to the upright position to sit up to be able to reach down more easily, if the phone is in the wrong place it can get bent enough in the mechanism to compromise the battery pouch inside (which hopefully only makes it heat up and smoke but it can potentially catch fire, and fire is one of the the worst things to have in the cabin). This isn’t hypothetical, they put this in the safety talk since it has happened and obviously by reports like this, continues to happen!
- ShadowBanThis01 3y agoAnd you've just proven that the announcements are basically useless, because nobody is given a reason to take them seriously.
- ShadowBanThis01 3y agoThe announcements are a failure because they DON'T SAY WHY. Nobody is going to take it seriously unless they're given a reason to. People might think it's about their fingers getting pinched or something. We need a word for uselessnessification. WTF are they afraid of, that they omitted the critical information from the announcement?
- untilted 3y agoMost recent flights I've been on, it was specifically stated it was a fire hazard in the safety announcement
- johnfn 3y agoThe reason is that many people have flying anxiety and saying stuff like "this could potentially cause a fire on the plane" will trigger it by having them imagine worst-case scenarios (that are additionally extremely unlikely to happen). I've heard "Well they shouldn't be on a plane if they're so anxious" as a response, but that is not a workable solution.
- Kwpolska 3y agoThe safety announcements are already full of worst-case scenarios, like cabin depressurisation, emergency landing and evacuation, and landing on water.
- johnfn 3y agoThat's not really true: they never say the word 'crash', and even the way that they phrase things make them seem more mundane than they actually are. You do need to know how to operate your mask; you don't need to know every possible way the plane might burst into flame.
- ShadowBanThis01 3y agoAnd you're pretending that "plane might burst into flame" is the best phrasing available for the danger posed by damaged batteries. Absurd.
- INTPenis 3y agoIncredible that we're so addicted to our phones that they make us get rid of any liquid but we can still carry that firebomb with us into the cabin.
- comex 3y agoYou can carry liquid into the cabin, just not through security…
- eastbound 3y agoYou can take an empty plastic bottle of 2L and fill it in with a fountain after security.
- BHSPitMonkey 3y agoYou're restating what the parent commenter said, yes. You can also buy many other kinds of food and drinks after security.
- pjmlp 3y agoYou're allowed to take liquids acquired after security, that are exactly what they are supposed to be, liquids for human consumption. What they don't want is people taking liquids that aren't designed for human consumption. As for the phone battery issue, yeah it is a problem, I guess the only solution would be to forbid any kind of battery powered device. I bet lots of folks won't be happy with such regulation. It would take care of flights for business purposes and increase selling books though.
- Kwpolska 3y agoShampoo isn't designed for human consumption, yet I can take up to 1 L in 100 mL bottles through security. The liquid rules were introduced in 2006 in response to a foiled terrorist plot involving explosives in soft drink bottles. But if you have 1 litre of liquids in small bottles, can't you just combine them to end up with a bomb?
- kqr2 3y agoPAN PAN : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-pan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-pan
- ShadowBanThis01 3y agoSimple solution: Seats shouldn't recline.
- userbinator 3y agoOne wonders that, if a phone can slip in, could a finger also encounter an unfortunate fate in the same place? In other industries, there are things called "pinch points" in machinery, and they are usually clearly marked and shielded, with attention paid during design to minimise them when possible. Even something that is only human-powered can produce a dangerous amount of force via the multiplication of levers. It's been a long time since I've been on a plane, but I do remember that the seats seem to obviously be optimised for weight savings, so minimising pinch points and/or guarding them is clearly not a priority.
- rich_sasha 3y agoI suppose a finger is typically attached to a hand and won't slip down a wide-ish gap, which is nonetheless too narrow for the whole hand, to retrieve the phone. That doesn't necessarily mean the finger would get stuck in that gap.
- t0mas88 3y agoPhones can also slide a lot further between seat and wall than a hand could. They're thinner and not attached to an arm...
- nradov 3y agoI fly a lot and have never seen an airline passenger lose a finger. This doesn't seem like an issue worth worrying about.
- anonzzzies 3y agoReminds me of the one where a camera was accidentally wedged between the seat and the stick, pushing the nose down without the pilots realising. Why can these seats move during flight…
- tgsovlerkhgsel 3y agoBecause the pilot not being able to adjust their seat for 8 hours is a bigger risk (being irritated by something for 8 hours is quite a distraction/stress factor) than allowing it to move during the flight.
- t0mas88 3y agoThis was a passenger seat, they're adjustable for comfort. Pilot seats also move during flight because you get into and out of them. Crews change seats several times on a long flight to allow them to sleep while others are flying.
- Simulacra 3y agoIt would be helpful if the seats were not so crushingly small and close to one another..