An American Airlines flight on Friday experienced an emergency evacuation prior to departure due to smoke emanating from a passenger’s laptop onboard the aircraft. During the chaos of evacuating the aircraft, three passengers were reported to have been injured.
The incident
American Airlines flight AA2045, scheduled to operate a flight from San Fransico International Airport (SFO) to Miami International Airport (MIA), had to be evacuated while still at the gate in SFO because the crew reported smoke coming from a passenger’s bag. According to reports from ABC7news, the smoke was from a laptop within a passenger’s carry-on bag.
The passengers onboard the Airbus A321-200 evacuated using the aerobridge already connected to the aircraft, and an emergency slide was also deployed. Unfortunately, three passengers suffered minor injuries during the evacuation process. Reports from the San Francisco Fire Department team that arrived at the scene state that the smoke was caused by the lithium-ion battery within the laptop catching fire.
It is unclear as to why the batteries caught fire and the situation is under investigation. American Airlines released the following statement:
“During boarding of American Airlines flight 2045 with service from San Fransisco (SFO) to Miami (MIA), smoke was reported from inside a customer’s bag. The bag was quickly removed by our crew members and all customers exited the aircraft. We thank our crew members for their professionalism and apologize to our customers for the inconvenience.”
The flight
The aircraft had a scheduled departure of 12:17 for Friday afternoon, but the reports suggest that the smoke was first reported just after 13:00 while still at the gate. At the time of writing, it is nearly 00:30 on Saturday morning in San Fransisco, and data from FlightAware indicate that the flight has just departed SFO and is en route to MIA with an expected flight time of around 5 hours and 30 minutes.
Photo: Vincenzo Pace | Simple Flying
Corroborating data with FlightRadar24.com confirms that there has been an aircraft swap. While the originally scheduled aircraft remains on the ground at SFO, another A321-200 was positioned to SFO before flying the passengers to Miami.
The airline operates its fleet of A321ceo under two different configurations:
| A321 Transcontinental | A321 | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Flagship First | 10 | First | 20 |
| Flagship Business | 20 | ||
| Main Cabin Extra | 36 | Main Cabin Extra | 35 |
| Main Cabin | 36 | Main Cabin | 135 |
| Total Seats | 102 | Total Seats | 190 |
The carrier utilizes the premium-heavy Transcontinental configuration for some of the longer domestic services, and the aircraft is equipped with the airline’s Flagship Business and First class products, which offer lie-flat seats, making the lengthy flight more comfortable for its passengers.
Thermal runaways
Thermal runaway is a phenomenon that could occur with lithium-ion batteries within modern electronic devices, wherein a single cell (due to reasons such as high temperature) could ignite, which then triggers a chain reaction with other cells within the batteries resulting in smoke or fires.
Photo: Robin Guess | Shutterstock
Earlier this year, there was a similar incident onboard a Breeze Airways Airbus A220 midflight. In this incident, the flight had to be diverted, and an investigation revealed that a passenger’s laptop suffered a thermal runaway and caught fire. However, in this instance, it was reported that the passenger was using the device.
While such incidents are not common within the industry, the safety factors of carrying lithium-ion battery onboard has been a safety concern for authorities for several years now.
Source: Simple Flying
