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Nov 25, 2010

Your Batteries Could Take Down A Plane

Ready for mass hysteria? Apparently the FAA has acknowledged that airplane cargo holds can get hot enough to cause lithium batteries to ignite. And there's more! There was a large quantity of such batteries on a plane that crashed recently:

The Federal Aviation Administration also acknowledged publicly for the first time Friday that a United Parcel Service 747-400 plane that crashed in Dubai last month killing both pilots was carrying a large quantity of lithium batteries.

Since the early 1990s, there have been dozens of incidents of batteries igniting in flight. But it has not been known what triggered many of the fires.

Now this announcement doesn't exactly seem like it's revealing anything novel. After all, batteries come with plenty of warnings regarding the temperature ranges they can tolerate and airplane cargo holds have little to no climate control—it makes sense that combining the two isn't a great idea.

What is fresh and new about this announcement is the potential for an extra huge wave of public hysteria and crazy demands that we leave our batteries off planes entirely despite cabins being air-conditioned.



26 comments:

Nominator said...

crazy.......didn't even know that

Frank said...

Holy shit, that´s actually pretty damn scary !!

rahul said...

oh...damn...its scary

MarkoManager said...

Great post...

killerkun said...

I had read about this before, I wonder why no planes have fallen for this before

Okko said...

could make for some epic lulz ...business duchebag is typing vigorously on the plane and woooosh nuts on fire!!!

Anonymous said...

Lol people are going to make a lot of money off tourists for batteries!

http://horntissimo-lotsamusic.blogspot.com/ said...

ruh roh! very nice find, mang

Evan said...

Knowing the TSA they probablly will be banned from planes.

shahidj said...

lol something else the airport security to look for

Hitchcock said...

wow thats good to know

Buff Drinklots said...

Lithium is dangerous, but I guess they'd need to get everyone to carry their batteries now.

Mayhem said...

Holy shit guys! Next thing in airport security: nothing electronic allowed!

Applelove said...

Wow, that's crazy. Another reason to be afraid of flying

psychofish said...

that's nuts, i never knew. i mean it isnt always a likely scenario but hell that's interesting

Michael V said...

That's crazy really... We'll soon have to be naked to take a fly...

MRanthrope said...

TSA screens our genitals and forces naked cancer x-rays upon the public....yet we're all free to carry lithium hand grenades on board. Genius.

Ratch said...

very interesting, how did people not figure this out before?

Oh oh! Banana! said...

No doubt they will open concession selling batteries for your convenience.

Sam said...

that's amazing but can't see how the heating can happen

Tree of life said...

here we go again..

anon408 said...

Cool post. Supporting!

http://anon408.blogspot.com

Dr. Steve said...

Hmmm, I wonder what they do to our brains...

Anonfourtwenty said...

Thats very sketchy!

000 said...

now that info is scary

SoreLosersGaming said...

Wow, that's a little worrying, especially because I can't imagine travelling anywhere without my laptop in tow...