A passenger has described a battery pack bursting into flames in the row in front of her during a flight, in an account that arrives as the UK’s aviation regulator warns that power banks and vapes are now the biggest fire risk on aircraft.
Sisters Sandy Edwards and Jackie Riggs, from East Sussex, were on a British Airways flight from Gatwick Airport to Italy on 15 October when it happened. The aircraft took off at about 07:30 and had not yet reached the Channel.
What happened
"It all happened so fast," Edwards told BBC Radio Sussex. "The gentleman in front of us started screaming and I thought he was having a panic attack, but then he stood up and his tracksuit was on fire."
"As he stood up, you could see that his leg was burnt. He threw a gadget on to the floor that was on fire."
The cabin crew extinguished the flames, gave instructions to passengers and moved the man to the back of the aircraft. The flight turned back to Gatwick, where paramedics saw him. Passengers were taken to a sealed-off gate and given grey tracksuits to change into; a police officer told them to keep the clothes they had worn sealed until they could be washed at high heat. The sisters were rebooked onto a 14:00 flight.
British Airways said it was "extremely grateful" for the crew’s actions in resolving the issue "swiftly and safely", and apologised to passengers for the delay.
Why the cabin rule exists
Ross Lydall of the Civil Aviation Authority put the hazard plainly: "If they overheat or malfunction, then they can be a bit like a firecracker — it can be a very dramatic, very intense heat."
That is the reasoning behind the rule that these devices stay with you in the cabin rather than in the hold. "The cabin crew, who are specially trained to deal with this, can intervene rapidly," Lydall said. A battery that ignites in a cargo hold burns unobserved; the same battery under a seat is dealt with in seconds.
There is a second hazard beyond the flames. Gavin Harper, a critical materials researcher at the University of Birmingham, said "noxious emissions" are a valid concern on long flights that cannot land quickly, because cabin air is recirculated rather than drawn from outside.
What this means for your next flight
The practical rules follow directly. Power banks, spare batteries, vapes and laptops belong in hand luggage, never in checked baggage. Keep power banks where you can reach them rather than in an overhead bin, and do not charge from them while they are buried in a bag, where heat cannot escape. Treat a pack that is swollen, physically damaged or unusually hot as finished — those are the failure signs that precede most incidents.
Harper noted that lithium-ion remains the dominant technology and that some components inside are genuinely hard to substitute, though work on cleaner alternatives continues. Until that changes, the mitigation is procedural rather than technical: keep the battery where someone trained can see it.
One practical note for travellers from here: many airlines now cap the capacity of power banks allowed on board and bar charging them in flight. Those limits vary by carrier rather than by country, so the rule that applied on the way out may not be the rule on the way back.
