Inflight battery fire

[Quickstatus]

How’s your aim? And orange juice?
How would you take a burning battery from overhead check moaeent and dunk it in a bucket of water - as per recommendation?

Twitter

 

[TomVexille]

Shouldn't they have fire extinguishers?

 

[Quickstatus]

Yes. Would have thought that it’s the first reflex.

What I don’t get is why lithium fire extinguishing methods currently use water.

Metal fires - lithium, magnesium, titanium can worsen with water (high school chemistry) because the metal reacts with water. In these cases should the recommendation be to use a dry powder?

Perhaps an Aviator @jb747 or @AviatorInsight or others could kindly comment
If an onboard fire extinguisher is discharged and therefore unable to be used for other fires, would the MEL be immediately affected resulting in a divert. Or there may be enough spares to continue?

What type of fire extinguisher are on board generally?. Water, CO2, dry powder?

 

[Franky]

We would need a longer time line to judge whether the incident was managed well or otherwise. At the end of the day though, it seems the fire was extinguished rather quickly, which was the primary objective.

 

[jb747]

What type of fire extinguisher are on board generally?. Water, CO2, dry powder?

BCF.

 

[Meggsy]

Yes. Would have thought that it’s the first reflex.

What I don’t get is why lithium fire extinguishing methods currently use water.

Metal fires - lithium, magnesium, titanium can worsen with water (high school chemistry) because the metal reacts with water. In these cases should the recommendation be to use a dry powder?

Perhaps an Aviator @jb747 or @AviatorInsight or others could kindly comment
If an onboard fire extinguisher is discharged and therefore unable to be used for other fires, would the MEL be immediately affected resulting in a divert. Or there may be enough spares to continue?

What type of fire extinguisher are on board generally?. Water, CO2, dry powder?

Lithium-ion batteries used in consumer products do not contain any actual lithium metal. They are classified as B class fires and immersion in water is considered the most universally available and effective cooling and extinguishing method. Most aircraft carry a mix of Water and Halon type fire extinguishers.
There was a discussion a short while back to include fire proof gloves for crew use on aircraft to pick these things up (burning batteries) and take to the galley but this particular one looks a little hot for that. I'm not sure if that was adopted or not.

 

[jb747]

The aircraft that I know of, all have gloves. But you need to get it cooled to a pretty reasonable extent before you can move it.

 

[dajop]

We would need a longer time line to judge whether the incident was managed well or otherwise. At the end of the day though, it seems the fire was extinguished rather quickly, which was the primary objective.

Impossible to tell from the short video if well managed or not. Lot of criticism in comments for not using a fire extinguisher (after all everyone is an armchair expert these days) , but who knows if another flight attendant is off screen retrieving the nearest fire extinguisher.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Perhaps a timely example of why we don't want locking mechanisms on overhead bins.

 

[Quickstatus]

But if locked then it can also be unlocked

 

[Franky]

Sure - but it needs to be fail safe, and would probably add time in gaining access if this type of event happened.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

But if locked then it can also be unlocked

Potentially, unless the fire trips the circuit and causes the door to permanently lock. For overhead bin locking to work, the default would have to be 'locked' so that in the event power was cut during an accident the bins would stay shut.

 

[Quickstatus]

I suppose like most things on an aircraft have a mechanical backup?

But yes agree that any implementation will have unintended consequences

 

[mannej]

Perhaps a timely example of why we don't want locking mechanisms on overhead bins.

Spoken like a true politician

 

[UP4014]

But if locked then it can also be unlocked

But if 90 seconds is the escape time and it takes 15 or 20 to open the locker who is going to make the sacrifice and offer to remian to until last, you?

 

[Quickstatus]

If the 90 sec count has started just go don’t wait

 

[jb747]

If the bin were actually fire proof, maybe you could just leave it there.

Crew have another way of opening every door and hatch on the aircraft. It just won't close again, ever.

 

[RooFlyer]

Patent overhead bin opener.

 

[Quickstatus]

Haha, and they rather us have plastic forks?

I think some airlines have replaced the axe with a crowbar?

The axe didnt work against the flight deck door on that Germanwings.

 

[jb747]

Every door, with one exception. It would not have been available on Germanwings.