Australian Airlines Ban Use of Samsung Galaxy Note 7 Phones After Battery Fires (reuters.com)

Less than a week after FAA said it was thinking about banning the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 from flights, three Australian airlines announced that it would ban passengers from using or charging Note 7 smartphones during flights. The announcement comes a week after Samsung announced that it was banning the sales of its new flagship smartphone over nearly three-dozen phones exploded worldwide. Reuters reports: Qantas, its budget unit Jetstar and Virgin Australia said they had not been directed to ban the use of the phone by aviation authorities, but did so as a precaution following Samsung's recall of the phones in 10 markets. Although customers will still be able to bring the phones on flights, the ban extends to the phones being plugged in to flight entertainment systems where USB ports are available. The recall follows reports of the 988,900 won ($885) phone igniting while charging -- an embarrassing blow to Samsung, which prides itself on its manufacturing prowess and had been banking on the devices to add momentum to a recovery in its mobile business. Samsung, the world's biggest smartphone vendor, has sold 2.5 million of the premium devices so far. "Following Samsung Australia's recall of the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 personal electronic device we are requesting that passengers who own them do not switch on or charge them in flight," a Qantas spokesman said in an emailed statement.

Comments

Surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

Air Freight in AU wont carry anything with Li-on batteries - what a pain that is.

We're a smallish but global company - getting an ex employee to ship back a laptop - first you have to find a carrier that will take things with Li-on batteries, Australians are typically lazy, so expecting someone to drive 40 minutes to Melbourne to drop it off for shipping took A LOT of encouragement and patience .

Re:Surprise

[thegarbz]

appeared to be stuck on slow

That's the way we like it. An awesome lifestyle which is often at odds with North Americans. But really you should try coming to Europe. You want a coffee? Expect that to be a 30+ minute adventure, and we like it that way too.

Set yourself on fire starter set?

[Powercntrl]

Hoverboard, e-cigarette, Note 7, and you're got that "tribute from district 12" Halloween costume nailed.

on the conservative side

[supernova87a]

Qantas I have personally seen has often been on the cautious side of operations, sometimes to my frustration.

I have personally been on flights where, when de-boarding on the tarmac, they have yelled at us not to use cell phones because of the possibility of fueling + sparks. Yet no other airline I've encountered seems to be concerned about this remote possibility.

Re:on the conservative side

[Solandri]

Qantas has the unique distinction of not having suffered a fatality during the jet airliner era. So they take unusual steps to try to preserve that record.

Initially, it wasn't because they were safer - they just got lucky and their smaller number of flights reduced the chances of an accident even if their accident rate was the same. But now that it's become something they brag about, they take extraordinary (sometimes excessive) measures to protect that record. (Some say it gets them more customers because people afraid of airliner accidents go out of their way to book on Qantas. But that's probably canceled out by people who believe the gambler's fallacy and go out of their way to avoid Qantas because they figure the airline is "overdue" for a fatal accident.)

Re:Non-removable battery = Samsung's fault

[beanpoppa]

Removable batteries would have done nothing to improve this situation (being banned on planes). Once a phone model has been recalled for potential battery fires, the entire model is tainted. The TSA or airlines would have no way of knowing by looking at the phone if the battery is affected or not. If they simply could send replacement batteries to affected users, or swap them right in the store because of a removable battery, there could still be potentially thousands of affected batteries out in the wild.

To the contrary, I could see where removable batteries would make the risk of a ban even worse. Suppose Samsung had made the battery user-swappable, and Samsung's batteries didn't have an issue. But a batch of cheap batteries for the model goes up for sale on Amazon/eBay, and suddenly reports of fires start to crop up. Even once the cause of the fires is identified as cheap, aftermarket batteries, airlines could ban the entire phone model because of the risk that users may have replaced the original battery with a cheap knock-off.

Surely, a easily swapped battery might have saved Samsung money in this case by allowing for an easy field replacement of a defective battery, but it wouldn't have saved the Note 7 line from being tainted.

Re:Non-removable battery = Samsung's fault

[tlhIngan]

Removable batteries would have done nothing to improve this situation (being banned on planes). Once a phone model has been recalled for potential battery fires, the entire model is tainted. The TSA or airlines would have no way of knowing by looking at the phone if the battery is affected or not. If they simply could send replacement batteries to affected users, or swap them right in the store because of a removable battery, there could still be potentially thousands of affected batteries out in the wild.

To the contrary, I could see where removable batteries would make the risk of a ban even worse. Suppose Samsung had made the battery user-swappable, and Samsung's batteries didn't have an issue. But a batch of cheap batteries for the model goes up for sale on Amazon/eBay, and suddenly reports of fires start to crop up. Even once the cause of the fires is identified as cheap, aftermarket batteries, airlines could ban the entire phone model because of the risk that users may have replaced the original battery with a cheap knock-off.

Surely, a easily swapped battery might have saved Samsung money in this case by allowing for an easy field replacement of a defective battery, but it wouldn't have saved the Note 7 line from being tainted.

You're assuming it's the battery at fault. As Boeing has demonstrated, you can buy good quality batteries (Yuasa is a VERY good brand) but crappy everything else can still cause them to go off.

And since the phones were all charging instead of randomly going off (like some iPhones and other phones - they were in the pockets and started to go off, or were in use), it's likely the charger circuit itself was not working properly. A removable battery wouldn't fix the problem because it's not in the battery, but the charger.

Though I am surprised the Note 7 went internal batteries given the Galaxy 7 and 7 Edge didn't. Odd