The good news is that close to 90% of incidents involve devices stored near the passenger’s seat, making them easier to detect before the device explodes or a fire ignites.
!!! Since the issue affects aircraft safety, I think that this sentence really means:
The bad news is that more that 10% of incidents involve devices stored remote from the passenger’s seat, making them more difficult to detect before the device explodes or a fire ignites.
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“portable chargers” This item is a non battery device. An unused charger will never start a fire. A charger that uses a battery is called a battery bank. They are usually one cell. Fires can only occur during charging or discharging and in rare cases when damaged. If the luggage was ever damaged and damaged a battery, I doubt if any record was kept!
Batteries use solid oxygen as an oxidizer which is safe unless the cell over heats. This would cause the solid O2 to vaporize and could ignite. The danger will pass when the O2 is used up. A good safety method would be a fireproof bag for battery devices. The airlines could rent them if they wanted to quit crying about batteries!
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And pressurized as well.
In this case, the O2 is in the form of metal oxides which decompose when heated, releasing the oxygen.
This article states that battery related incidents are “increasing,” but does not give any report of how many of these incidents have actually occurred. Is it 5, or 500? Reporting the actual number of incidents would help the reader to determine if this is a real problem for aviation, or, another “tempest in a teapot.” Facts are important!
A congressional committee needs to investigate this matter. I think Lauren Boebert would be the perfect choice to chair the panel.
Anyone know if there’s a device that can detect Li ion batteries in checked luggage? If so, TSA could add that to the other checks they do on every piece of checked luggage.