Your Batteries Could Take Down A Plane [Travel]

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 an enormous 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 massive quantity of lithium batteries.

Since the early 1990s, there had been dozens of incidents of batteries igniting in flight. Nonetheless it has not been known what triggered most of the fires.

Now this announcement doesn’t exactly appear like it’s revealing anything novel. In any case, batteries come with a variety of warnings in regards to the temperature ranges they could tolerate and airplane cargo holds have little to no climate control-it is smart that combining the two isn’t a terrific idea.

What is fresh and new about this announcement is the opportunity of one more huge wave of public hysteria and demands that we leave our batteries off planes. [ Chicago Breaking Business via Slashdot ]

Image by Allyson Kitts/ ShutterStock

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This post is tagged: enormous quantity, federal aviation administration, lithium batteries, massive quantity, united parcel service