The leader of the largest flight attendants union in the United States has said she would be happy to have e-cigarettes and other vaping devices completely banned from air transport. Sara Nelson, head of the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA-CWA) and who’s often referred to as the most powerful flight attendant in the United States, expressed her concern with the lithium Ion batteries that are used to power the devices.
The risks posed by the Lithium batteries in e-Cigarettes have been well known for several years. In 2015, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued a Safety Alert that banned e-cigarettes from being placed in hold luggage. The UN body for civil aviation has issued a similar directive that forbids the carriage of e-cigarettes in passenger luggage bound for the cargo hold.
There are two main fire risks posed by e-cigarettes – first, is the chance that a device overheats when the device is accidentally switched on (especially if it’s covered up in a bag). The second threat comes from it’s Lithium battery overheating and causing what’s known as “thermal runaway”.
“A lithium-ion battery fire on a plane can be catastrophic,” Nelson warned CBS News in a recent interview.
But while a lithium battery fire can be catastrophic it’s most definitely not a rare event. Lithium batteries are found in all sorts of consumer electronics – mobile phones, iPad’s, and power banks are just some of the most popular devices you’ll find passengers take on a plane with them that are powered with a Lithium battery.
In fact, a very conservative estimate suggests there are at least twice as many Lithium batteries onboard every flight than there are passengers.
Most often, Lithium battery fires are caused by cheap power banks overheating of mobile phones getting damaged in seat mechanisms. The reason that a Lithium battery fire is so dangerous is because of the thermal runaway – the battery has to be contained within a special fireproof bag or submerged in water to keep it from overheating and catching fire all over again.
Clearly, any fire onboard a plane is potentially very dangerous so flight attendants are trained in detecting and then responding quickly and effectively to Lithium battery fires.
But while Lithium batteries are clearly a risk, they have also become an integral part of our lives. Airlines simply don’t have the time, resources or expertise to determine whether the battery in every device being taken on their planes is safe. The advice remains to pack anything with a Lithium battery in your cabin baggage so that if the worst does happen a trained flight attendant can deal with the situation.
That being said, there is an argument that an entire category of product could be banned if the risk just isn’t worth taking. Remember the hoverboard ban from a few years ago? Or perhaps the more recent ban on certain models of MacBook Pro that some airlines introduced?
The same could be said for e-cigarettes. According to CBS News and the FAA, there have been at least 48 e-cigarette related smoke or fire incidents at airports or on planes since 1991 – that’s not a huge number but it is larger than all other major product categories like laptops and mobile phones.
