4 injured evacuating airplane on fire at Busan airport
BUSAN, Jan. 29 (Yonhap) – A passenger aircraft caught fire at an international airport in the southeastern city of Busan on Tuesday, with four people sustaining injuries while evacuating.
Fire authorities said an Air Busan plane, an Airbus A321-200, bound for Hong Kong from Gimhae International Airport in Busan, some 320 kilometers southeast of Seoul, caught fire at its tail before its takeoff around 10:26 p.m. Tuesday. They added that all 169 passengers, six crew members and one maintenance worker aboard evacuated on an inflatable slide.
Firefighters arrived on the scene at 10:34 p.m. Just before midnight, fire authorities said they had completely extinguished the fire by 11:31 p.m.
See also
and subsequent posts.
“There was a crackling sound from a luggage rack at the back of the plane and then, smoke emerged,” a passenger told Yonhap News Agency. “The smoke grew thicker and flames dropped from the rack as a flight attendant was bringing a fire extinguisher there.”
That suggests a lithium battery from a laptop or other electronic device.
It sure does.
The only thing that ever had me waking up in a cold sweat in some random hotel room was dealing with a cabin fire in flight. And that was mostly before the invention of lithium batteries.
We now carry fire containment bags for dealing with the smoking / smoldering iPad or laptop that can still be practically handled with gloves about like oven mitts.
But a full blown battery-fed fire inside a suitcase inside an overhead luggage bin is probably unextinguishable with the tools at hand. Add any flammable liquids (booze? hand sanitizer?) in that bin and it gets real ugly real quick.
As we saw here.