iPhone Auto-Combusts On Australian Airplane

First time accepted submitter thegreymonkey writes "Last Friday, an iPhone caught fire on flight ZL319 operating from Lismore to Sydney. This incident is under investigation from Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) and the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA). This accident might be related to the iPhone battery again." Whether it "caught fire" may be a matter of semantics; as reported in the above linked story and by Network World (hat tip to reader alphadogg), though, the iPhone "started glowing red and emitting dense smoke."

Comments

Re:Now we know why phones must be off on planes

[Pi1grim]

Who said it was? To prevent things like this you have to take the battery out. Oh, wait

Re:From XKCD to life??

[AvitarX]

One hand gernade is less than a 20oz soda, high explosives aren't calorically dense, they are good at release.

You may as well say a gram of anything has huge amounts of energy (E=mc^2), extracting it is left as a thought excersize.

Re:From XKCD to life??

[omglolbah]

Actually, the standard "Do not use water with electrical fires" is based on the danger of electrocution.
'Throwing' water on something would work fine as there is no stream connecting you to the electrified component.

In battery-powered systems this is usually not a concern and water is a fine medium to put it out with ;)

Hell, in any modern house the GFCI (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Residual-current_device) should trip long before you're in any danger of serious damage. More likely than not the power has already tripped if there is an electrical fire, or it will trip the instant the stream of water causes leakage current from the burning piece of hardware.

High voltage is of course a completely different scenario, luckily one most wont have to deal with... Like a water cooling system next to a 132kV transformer... ugh...

Re:From XKCD to life??

[Khyber]

"In battery-powered systems this is usually not a concern and water is a fine medium to put it out with ;)"

Not by any means are you correct. Battery fires are classified as metal fires, and require a class-d extinguisher.

You try putting out a lithium fire by throwing water on it - I dare you.

Re:Car DVD PLayer

[scharkalvin]

That would probably have been an exploded electrolytic capacitor. The small ones inside low power devices usually just blow their tops which are scored to act as a safety valve. The larger type capacitors can literally blow up like an M80 firecracker. I've seen photos of TV sets that had a hole blown in the side of the cabinet by a capacitor going "bomb".

Re:From XKCD to life??

[Anonymous Coward]

"Not by any means are you correct."

  You sir are incorrect, if it is the electronics burning, and not the battery, he is 100% correct in hist statement. If the fire is a result of the battery overloading then it is an chemical/metal fire. In which case water is a bad idea; chemical splash/just wont work on metal.

You're missing the point entirely.

The iphone 4 uses a "Built-in rechargeable lithium-ion battery. (http://www.apple.com/iphone/specs.html)
Putting water with Lithium is bad. (http://www.lenntech.com/periodic/water/lithium/lithium-and-water.htm)

Since the battery is damn near on fire, it's probably not wise to assume it remains intact and is not, in fact, leaking. Because if you're wrong, you get a pretty interesting reaction. Try YouTube if you'd like some examples, I trust you can locate the 'search' bar.

Re:Blame game

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

If the battery manufacturer screwed the pooch, its Apple's fault?

They would be accountable, yes.

Re:From XKCD to life??

[Obfuscant]

Khyber, as someone who is not yet a pilot might want to realize, there is a world of difference between the Cessna or whatever LSA you're learning to fly in and a commercial jet airliner when it comes to what kinds of things might be dangerous and what might be a hazard that can be managed.

For example, if your iPhone you've stored in your flight bag in the back seat spontaneously combusts while you are flying solo:

• YOU are the only person available to deal with it.
• Distracting YOU, the pilot, while flying, is a huge detriment to the safety of flight.
• The back seat was probably manufactured with flame retardant, but through multiple cleanings has lost much of that capability, and will probably burst into flames, too.
• The noxious vapors from the back seat burning will quickly incapacitate the only person on the plane who is able to fly it.
• That burning back seat is about three feet away from the gas tanks.
• The only fire extenquisher on the plane is strapped to the floor between the front seats, and you've got to get it unstrapped, unpinned, and pointed at the fire while using one hand to fly and one hand to do all the rest.
• Unless you are learning to fly in a corporate jet or turbocharged multi, you probably don't have an oxygen supply, and certainly wouldn't have much training in how to don and use it quickly.

Now, think about an iPhone starting to combust in some passenger's pocket on a 737.

• As it starts to get warm, the pax will feel it, pull it from his pocket, and start yelling, long before flames start.
• One of the several trained, non-flying crew members will react to the cries and will be able to focus her efforts on locating the fire extinguishers and using them to put the flames out. Something they are trained to do before they are allowed to be crew members, and which they get recurrent training in.
• The flying pilot, after being notified of a potential problem with onboard fire, will quickly don an oxygen mask and continue to fly the aircraft.
• The PNF (non flying pilot) will also don a mask and begin concentrating on the full "in flight fire" checklist, which you might have seen a few times in your POH but have probably never had to go through in real life, much less in a fully featured simulator with an evaluator grading you on how well you do.

So, yes, it is interesting for you to keep saying that "it's a checklist item". but not really relevant. I've also never seen it in any small aircraft checklist I've been through. Are you referring to checking the engine compartment for bird's nests and the like? And what does your checklist say to do about "flammable objects"? I know that I personally carry a lot of flammable objects every time I fly. Those sectional charts are printed on paper, you know. That book of approach plates? The batteries in MY cellphone, and the ones in my aviation handheld radios. Until they changed the certificates, those pilot certs you are required to carry used to be printed on some pretty easily ignited paper. Now they are flammable plastic, but the medical cert is still on paper.

Do you remove all flammable clothing when you fly and fly only in Nomex?

Inconceivable!

[DragonHawk]

Any power adapter should be able to survive a complete short on the output if it is designed properly.

And as we all know, the consumer electronics market is known for its high quality and attention to detail in their designs and build quality. ;-)