U.S. Department of Transportation: E-Cigarettes May Be Classified as Aviation Hazards Under Review

Lead: It is reported that on the evening of August 9, a bag on a plane at Boston Logan International Airport began to smoke, alerting the U.S. Department of Transportation. Investigators found that an e-cigarette may have been the cause of the smoke. Airport officials asked the Department of Transportation to consider classifying e-cigarettes as hazardous materials.
China e-cigarette news: On the evening of August 9, a bag on a plane at Boston Logan International Airport began to smoke and had to be removed from the aircraft. The Massachusetts fire chief believed an e-cigarette may have caused the smoke. Airport officials asked the Department of Transportation to consider classifying e-cigarettes as hazardous materials.

Baggage handlers removed the smoking bag from a JetBlue aircraft scheduled to fly to Buffalo and extinguished it with a handheld fire extinguisher. It is still unclear whether the burning had reached the stage of an actual fire.

The incident raised the question of whether e-cigarettes, which use rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, should be added to the list of prohibited items, which already includes matches, flares, and most leaking batteries.

He said: “The more these kinds of things become common, the more carefully our industry has to study them, because that is how we have handled other hazardous materials.”

Massachusetts official Ed Federski said lithium-ion batteries pose a threat.

He said: “Airport officials met with a local FAA inspector and asked for an investigation.”

A spokesperson for the FAA in Washington said the prohibited items list is controlled by the Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. The spokesperson also said authorities are waiting for an official determination of the cause of the smoke.

Massachusetts Fire Department spokesperson Jennifer Mieth said: “If there is a battery in the e-cigarette, then it has the potential to cause a fire.” She said the investigation has not yet been completed.

According to the airline, passengers on the EMBRAER 190 aircraft exited through the regular passenger door, and all baggage was unloaded and inspected. Although the plane can carry 100 passengers, it ultimately flew to Buffalo with only the crew on board.

So far, concerns about lithium-ion batteries have focused on the possibility of internal defects that cause them to heat up, which can trigger nearby batteries to explode in a runaway reaction. A commercial shipment containing 1,000 e-cigarettes was believed to have caused a fire on a FedEx MD-11 aircraft at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport in August 2009.
In January 2013, a lithium-ion battery caught fire on a Japan Airlines Boeing 787 parked at Logan Airport. A few days later, another fire occurred on an ANA flight over Japan, grounding the 787 for months. But these batteries were installed as part of the aircraft, not carried as cargo.

Compared with carry-on baggage, storing fire-causing items in checked baggage or cargo areas is riskier, because devices that begin to smoke or catch fire can be detected more quickly in the passenger cabin. Although cargo holds on passenger aircraft are equipped with detection and fire suppression systems, fires in flight are still considered dangerous.