Laptop fire caused American Airlines jet to be evacuated

A laptop fire on a passenger jet precipitated a dramatic emergency evacuation on Friday. American Airlines Flight 2045 was getting ready to fly from San Franciso to Miami when the cabin started to fill with smoke – it was coming from the rear of the plane, from a laptop bag. As the airplane was still on the tarmac, there were only three minor injuries in the rush to disembark using the airbridge and slides. However, one passenger needed to be taken for further treatment.

A statement from American Airlines, as reported by CBS News, says “the bag was quickly removed by our crew members and all customers exited the aircraft.” The airline also apologized for the inconvenience caused to its customers and thanked staff for their professional handling of the situation. You can see in the Twitter/X video embedded above that the situation was highly charged and quite terrifying for some passengers.

We looked at several reports about the American Airlines laptop fire but didn’t find any sources that could provide further details about the laptop model involved or any indication of why it might spontaneously combust.

Current airline regulations state that laptops should be only carried in hand luggage and contain batteries rated at 100Wh or lower. Thus, we see workstation replacement-style laptops often boast of having a 99 Wh battery. However, up to two extra battery packs of up to 160Wh are permissible with airline approval.

These battery-limiting regulations started to roll out worldwide in the late noughties, as we began to see dangers in the thirst for high-capacity high power density batteries. Lithium-based batteries, as used by devices like smartphones, tablets, portable game consoles, and laptops have been behind many reports of tech going bad over the last couple of decades.

Dangerous devices are often recalled after a brief period of availability, but in the interim may have caused serious fires or even explosions. Have a quick search through the Tom’s Hardware archives for plenty of examples. Probably the most notorious ‘accidentally incendiary’ electronic device is a smartphone, though, the Samsung Galaxy Note 7.

Circling back to the American Airlines jet evacuation story, one of the passengers pondered over the probable cause of the fire on the jet. “Sometimes, they do get hot,” if you close a device but they don’t sleep properly or shut down, the passenger mused, reports CBS. 

I’ve experienced a severe overheating issue with a Dell Latitude that didn’t sleep or shut down when the lid was closed – but I caught it before there was much in the way of smoke (or fire) thanks to a strong burning plastic smell. The battery in that device could be quickly detached using a sliding mechanism, but it couldn’t be used again as the keyboard keys had melted.