Laptop Fire Sparks Emergency Evacuation Of American Airlines Flight in San Francisco

by Gary Leff

American Airlines flight 2045 from San Francisco to Miami was forced to evacuate due to a fire inside the aircraft cabin on Friday.

The Airbus A321 was boarding for its trip to Miami at 12:15 p.m. when smoke reportedly filled the cabin, and crew evacuated the aircraft. Passengers exited via both emergency slides and the still-attached jetbridge.

The San Francisco Fire Department extinguished the fire, which was caused by a customer’s laptop. The aircraft had been slated to fly to Boston, Dallas and Knoxville on Saturday. The deployment of what appears to be three slides makes that seem unlikely.

According to an American Airlines spokesperson,

During boarding of American Airlines flight 2045 with service from San Francisco (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.

While it doesn’t happen often, lithium ion batteries catch fire. The fire can usually be contained in the passenger cabin. It’s harder to deal with as cargo, which is why airlines don’t allow these sorts of batteries to travel in checked luggage. (It’s why a generation of ‘smart’ suitcases have been banned even as carry on bags, since there’s always the chance a carry on might have to be checked.)

The aircraft would have had fire containment bags and heat resistant gloves on board to deal with an electronic device fire. I believe these are stored in an aft galley cart. So had the fire occurred during flight it could have been addressed.

Notably, though, in 2017 when the U.S. banned laptops from some U.S.-bound flights and required that they be checked, it created significant risk since it’s easier to manage a fire of this kind in the passenger cabin than in cargo.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. Sounds to me like the traveller must of stupidly left there laptop running instead of shutting it off completely and the battery probably over-heated

  2. If it happened during boarding the flight attendants weren’t even getting paid SMFH!

  3. This will be buried. Not a Boeing airplane. Not an airplane issue at all, but MSM never passes up a chance to pigpile.on Boeing.

  5. Sure hope Susan saved her candy crush level before springing into action. By the way Gary, the fire containment bags are stored in an overhead bin with easy access
    for the crew.. The offending device is then stored in an a galley cart next to the pretzels and stale cookies.

  6. One of the ways to keep thermal runaway from happening is to not charge the battery beyond 30% capacity. The higher it is charged, the more it is subject to destructive thermal runaway. Most people are not going to follow this recommendation. Overcharging is also bad. I have had lithium ion batteries go bad (other than no longer holding a charge) and a few that heated up but none that heated so much that they caught fire.

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