Asiana Airlines cargo plane crashes off Jeju
JEJU, South Korea, July 28 (Yonhap) -- A cargo plane operated by Asiana Airlines, South Korea's second-largest flagship carrier, crashed into the sea off Jeju Island Thursday, killing two, the Coast Guard said.
Debris of the Boeing-744 aircraft, which departed from Incheon International Airport at 3:05 a.m. for China's Pudong, was found in waters about 107 kilometers west of the city of Jeju by a Coast Guard patrol boat at 6:40 a.m., the Coast Guard said.
The Asiana plane with one pilot and one crew member disappeared from radar at 4:09 a.m. while returning to Jeju International Airport after reporting some mechanical trouble, officials said.
I hope they will ban lithium batteries from air travel.
All cargo, 90% of which was standard cargo and IT products, the remainder comprised liquids (e.g., paint, resin solution, ...), was in compliance with IATA regulations.
Yeah, but having one catching fire in your pocket won't ignite 50T of other batteries.
If they don't ban it, they should at least rethink the packaging. Or the fire suppression system in freighter aircraft.
Not much has changed after UPS crashed. It would have been another story if it was a passenger flight, or if the UPS had crashed in the middle of a major city.
ok but how often do you hear a story about a burned leg because of a cell phone battery burn.
Same for laptop batteries, everytime it happened, it made a big fuzz, meaning it's extremely rare.
Now, if the fire came from something else, the batteries didn't help, that's for sure.
Batteries, which kind doesn't matter, are always dangerous goods and thus they require some care by handling. The most problematic battery is the Lithium battery which can be found these days in every cell phone, in laptops, in many many electronic products. Lithium batteries are great because they last long and thus have a great capacity, they don't have a so called memory effect and they are relatively light... However, Lithium batteries are also not the most stable batteries on the planet. In fact, all it requires to make a simple small battery unstable is to drop it on the floor... Now the batteries in our electronics are build to withstand such shocks, they are inbedded in a strong plastic so that they are relatively crash proof. However, not all lithium batteries are build for durability, some have nearly no protection at all, such batteries can be found in many applications. For example, you have some surveillance camera's that use them, some toys may use them also, etc...
To give you an example how dangerous such batteries are: As a firephotographer for a fire department I'm very interested in everything that has to do with the fire department, about a year ago I bumped into an investigation report of a fire that destroyed a warehouse. The fire happened about 1,5 hours after the warehouse closed for business and since it was evening nearly the whole building was destroyed. Such fires are always interesting for a decent investigation since once in a while it could happen that it's arson to get insurance money. However, the investigation revealed that the cause of the fire was one (1) single lithium battery that was dropped on the floor about 2 hours prior to the start of the fire. Due the dropping of the battery it was damaged and after a while it finally exploded and set other flammable goods on fire (paper, wood, chemicals)... A complete building was destroyed by a single battery...
It doesn't happen a lot but it happens... I've seen it in my company also where we used a specific type of lithium battery in an industrial remote control for a custom (inhouse) build machine. One day the remote control was dropped on the floor and less then an hour later the batteries inside exploded which caused a fire (fortunately during day time so that was quickly resolved)... We constructed a new remote control and replaced the Lithium batteries with other more durable batteries and the case was closed.
Now imagine that you have one single battery that is compromised due a shock and it's loaded in bulk with plenty of other batteries and other flammable goods... All that in an airplane and you have a potential recipe for disaster...
Lithium is nice stuff. It can explode if exposed to air, and it can explode if exposed to water. Oh did I mention it also reacts with nitrogen? Normally it's something you keep locked up in a jar submerged in mineral oil. With a big danger sign on it.
NHK reports (in Japanese...) that a Singapore Airlines Boeing 747-400F made an emergency landing at Okinawa after a fire was reported on the cargo deck.
Acid-drop wrote:that was interesting Bralo20, thanks.
We may have a revolution in the way we move electronics if this is really the cause of everything.
Interesting reading material Bralo20 ! Fire and smoke are very dangerous in airplanes, it has been proven once more!
