A fire broke out in the cabin of a V Air passenger liner bound for Japan on Friday night after a portable battery in a passenger’s carry-on luggage spontaneously caught fire in the first incident of its kind affecting a Taiwanese air carrier, the Aviation Safety Council (ASC) said yesterday.
“This was the first incident of a mobile device power source triggering a fire on a domestic airliner in flight,” council executive director Thomas Wang (王興中) said.
He said that between 1991 and last year there have been more than 170 incidents involving lithium battery explosions on commercial aircraft worldwide, but this was the first case involving a Taiwanese air carrier.
Photo: Copy by Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Times
“The council plans to investigate the case,” he said.
The device in question was a lithium battery made in China, the Civil Aeronautics Administration said, adding that it was not immediately clear what type of electronic device it was used to power.
Wang said that the battery did not catch fire because it was on an aircraft in flight, and it would have caught fire even if it had not been brought onto the plane.
There have been discussions on whether mobile power sources should be allowed on airplanes, he said, but cell phones also have lithium batteries and “the possibility of banning them is not high.”
Current practice among the world’s airlines is that mobile power sources — as long as they are kept in carry-on luggage — can be brought aboard aircraft, he said.
Flight ZV252 took off from Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport for Haneda Airport at 10:26pm on Friday.
The fire was put out shortly after it began, and the battery was placed in a bucket of water to ensure that it would not reignite.
All the aircraft’s 161 passengers and crew members were unharmed in the incident.
Due to safety concerns, the captain flew the aircraft back to Taoyuan airport.
The aircraft arrived at the airport at 11:21pm and was confirmed not to have been damaged. The budget air carrier, in consideration of the lingering smell of smoke, arranged for the passengers to take another flight, which left at 12:30am yesterday.
The airline said that the council had confirmed the safety of the aircraft before it was put back into service yesterday.
When the crew members return to Taiwan, they will be questioned so that officials can learn more about the fire, the council said.
DISTRUST WARRANTED? The WHO is under China’s control and has become a useless organization, while data from China cannot be trusted, a Control Yuan member said China’s demand that the novel coronavirus that emerged in Wuhan, Hubei Province, not be referred to with names like the “Wuhan pneumonia” betrays its lack of confidence in itself, Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) told lawmakers yesterday. Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Tsai Yi-yu (蔡易餘) asked Su, during a interpellation at the Legislative Yuan in Taipei, for his view on China’s attempts to redeem its national image in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. These included China’s efforts to “bleach” its image, including having WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus publicly praise its handling of the COVID-19 outbreak, and thanking it for buying time
TOO TIRED: Investigators found that the pilot’s lack of alertness could be attributed to a lack of sleep the previous night, when he had slept with his child It was a copilot’s inappropriate operation of the aircraft and the pilot’s insufficient alertness that led to a hard landing of a China Airlines cargo flight on Dec. 13, 2018, the Taiwan Transportation Safety Board said yesterday. Flight CI6844, a Boeing 747-409 which departed from Hong Kong International Airport, landed on the pre-threshold area of runway L5 at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, about 21m before the head of the runway, an investigation report said. The hard landing damaged three runway lights, but none of the personnel on board sustained any injuries, the report said. When approaching the runway, the copilot failed to maintain
REPEAT OFFENDER: The man went outside for exercise on Wednesday and then left his home on Saturday with his girlfriend, officials said A New Taipei City man has been fined NT$400,000 (US$13,221) and ordered into government quarantine after breaking home quarantine for a second time on Saturday. The 25-year-old man, surnamed Chen (陳) returned to Taiwan on Sunday last week and was ordered to home quarantine until Sunday. He was seen leaving his home on a scooter with his girlfriend on Saturday, three days after he was fined NT$200,000 for going outside to exercise, police said. Chen has now been placed in a quarantine center arranged by the district office and health center of the district where he lives, police said. Police warned the public
Taipei residents who stay at hotels in the city during their 14-day mandatory quarantine period are eligible to apply for the city’s NT$7,000 subsidy, with online applications to be launched next week. Taipei Deputy Mayor Vivian Huang (黃珊珊) on Monday said Taipei residents who have COVID-19 Health Declaration and Home Quarantine Notice dated after March 19 and a quarantine hotel receipt for the dates covered by the quarantine period, would be eligible for the subsidy. The Taipei City Government on Sunday told the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) that so many city residents are under home quarantine that about 90 percent of
RSS