A Delta Air Lines flight from Atlanta to Fort Lauderdale was forced to make an emergency diversion on Monday morning after a lithium battery in a passenger’s backpack ‘exploded’ mid-flight.
The Boeing 757, with as many as 180 people onboard, was flying at around 32,000 feet when the pilots declared an emergency and diverted the plane to Fort Myers on July 7.
Flight Details
- Delta Air Lines flight DL-1334
- Atlanta Hartsfield (ATL) to Fort Lauderdale (FLL)
- Aircraft: Boeing 757 (registration: N659DL)
In a statement, a spokesperson for the airline said flight attendants onboard flight DL-1334 “extinguished the personal device and declared an emergency out of an abundance of caution.”
In a recording of air traffic control communications, the pilots told controllers: “Ok, so the backpack has been contained. We think it was a lithium battery that caused the smoke and the fire.”
“It’s in a containment bag. No smoke in the cabin at this point. No active fire. It’s in the lavatory. We’re planning on taxiing clear of the runway.”
The flight departed Atlanta Hartsfield at around 7:20 am on Monday and eventually left Fort Myers for the rest of the flight to Fort Lauderdale at around 2 pm the same day.
The incident occurred less than two months after Southwest Airlines became the first US carrier to impose new rules on the use of portable battery packs following a spate of frightening midair emergencies involving the popular travel accessory.
Since May 28, Southwest has required passengers to keep their portable chargers in sight when they are being used during a flight and banned their use to charge devices when they are stored in a bag or an overhead bin.
A slew of Asian airlines and the German flag carrier Lufthansa have introduced similar policies in recent months over fears that portable chargers are susceptible to overheating and causing what is known as a ‘thermal runaway.’
One of the most serious thermal runaway events involving a portable battery pack occurred on January 28, when a charger overheated in a passenger’s backpack in the overhead locker of an Air Busan airplane in South Korea while it was preparing for departure.
By the time flight attendants were aware of what was happening, the fire had already spread, and an evacuation of the plane was ordered. Several passengers and crew sustained minor injuries during the evacuation via emergency slides, while the plane was completely engulfed in flames and destroyed.
Any device powered by a lithium battery–be it a cellphone, laptop, e-cigarette, or power bank has the potential to overheat and catch fire. The term ‘thermal runaway’ comes from the fact that Lithium-ion batteries are made of lots of fuel cells. When one cell overheats, this can quickly spread to the next cell and so on until the power bank explodes into flames.
In the case of Delta flight DL-1334, the flight attendants were able to quickly get the device into a fire containment bag, which is designed to starve the device of oxygen and thereby remove the risk of fire.
The flight attendants would have put the fire containment device in a lavatory because the airplane bathrooms are fitted with smoke detectors, thereby providing an early warning that the fire had not been properly extinguished.
