A portable electricity bank probably caused a fire that swallowed up and destroyed a passenger plane in South Korea in January, according to local authorities.
The Air Busan plane caught fire at Gimhae International Airport in the south of the country on January 28 – which made three people on board undergo minor injuries.
On Friday, the South Korea Ministry of Transport said that the results of the provisional surveys indicate that the fire may have started because the insulation inside a feeding battery had broken down.
The electricity bank was found in an aerial luggage compartment where the fire was detected for the first time, and its debris had burn marks, the statement said.
The investigators could not say what could have caused the ventilation of the battery, he added.
The update is also based solely on provisional results and is not a final accident report on the plane, an Airbus A321ceo.
Airlines from around the world have prohibited checkered luggage electricity banks for years due to safety problems, which relate to lithium-ion batteries inside the devices.
These batteries can produce heat and extreme fire if damage or manufacturing defects make them short-circuit.
Lithium-ion batteries of all kinds have been prohibited from cargo wedges of passenger planes since 2016, according to a directive of the International Civil Aviation Organization.
During the week following the Air Busan fire, the airline has tightened these rules, announcing that it would no longer allow passengers to keep electric banks in their luggage on board.
The carrier said that the new rules were in response to an increase in the number of electricity banks overheating.
An increasing number of airlines – including China Airlines and Thai Airways – deploy similar rules, with Singapore Airlines and its low -cost scooter which becomes the last to ban the use and load of electric banks on April 1.
On February 28, the South Korean government also announced that passengers on board flights in the country would be required to transport batteries and portable chargers on their person, rather than storing them in air compartments.
