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Home  >  News • Spirit  >  Spirit Airlines Flight Diverts After Battery Fire Onboard, 10 Hospitalized
NewsSpirit

Spirit Airlines Flight Diverts After Battery Fire Onboard, 10 Hospitalized

Matthew Klint Posted onMarch 4, 2023March 4, 2023 27 Comments

10 passengers were hospitalized after a battery fire onboard a Spirit Airlines flight prompted an emergency landing in Florida.

Spirit Airlines Battery Fire Forces Diversion, Lands 10 In Hospital

A Spirit Airlines flight bound for Orlando (MCO) diverted to Jacksonville, Florida (JAX) after a battery caught fire in an overhead bin. The flight had departed from Dallas (DFW) at 2:00 pm CT. Disturbingly, this was not a case of a battery catching fire and then being placed into a fire containment bag.

Instead, the fire burned for nearly 20 minutes as flight attendants and an ex-fireman traveling on the flight made multiple attempts to put it out. WTLV Jacksonville interviewed a passenger onboard, who explained:

“There was a retired fireman that jumped up and flight crew came in and they tried putting water on it and another guy went and got a bucket because I think the fireman reached in and grabbed it and they got it put out, but it took about 20 minutes.

“The pilot got us out of the air really fast it was exciting and had a really smooth landing of all the things, but it was quite frightening for a little while until we knew we were on the ground and safe.”

Upon landing, at least 10 passengers or crew members were taken to the hospital for smoke injuries.

Spirit Airlines confirmed the incident, but did not elaborate on the injuries:

“Spirit Airlines flight 259 from Dallas (DFW) to Orlando (MCO) diverted to Jacksonville International Airport (JAX) following what’s believed to be a battery fire from a Guest item in an overhead bin that was extinguished inflight. The plane landed at JAX and taxied to the terminal without incident. We thank our crew and Guests for their quick actions to ensure the safety of everyone onboard, and we thank first responders for meeting the aircraft.”

CONCLUSION

A Spirit Airlines flight diverted to Jacksonville after a battery fire onboard. It took nearly 20 minutes to extinguish the fire and 10 people onboard were hospitalized upon landing.

Is it just me or have we seen a marked uptick in the number of battery fires lately? Let’s hope these do not become more common.


images: @nottajshow / Twitter

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About Author

Matthew Klint

Matthew is an avid traveler who calls Los Angeles home. Each year he travels more than 200,000 miles by air and has visited more than 135 countries. Working both in the aviation industry and as a travel consultant, Matthew has been featured in major media outlets around the world and uses his Live and Let's Fly blog to share the latest news in the airline industry, commentary on frequent flyer programs, and detailed reports of his worldwide travel.

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27 Comments

  1. Rjb Reply
    March 4, 2023 at 9:55 am

    Can’t put out a battery fire with water. Why did they not put the item in the fire bag? Did they not have one? Not know how to use it?

    • Billy Bob Reply
      March 4, 2023 at 12:03 pm

      It was spirit… they first needed to collect payment from the passengers to unlock the fire bag

    • Flyer1 Reply
      March 4, 2023 at 3:04 pm

      @Rjb…the fire containment bag is full of water. Any liquids, other than alcohol, can be used to douse the fire while the fire extinguishers/PBEs are being dislodged from brackets and the fire containment bag is being prepared. You never wait on the emergency equipment to arrive at location of suspected fire.

    • jm Reply
      March 5, 2023 at 3:10 pm

      Flight attendants are trained to use water or other liquid, not the Halon extinguisher, to cool the battery off to keep the fire from spreading and the battery from exploding (or that’s the reasoning as I understood it).

  2. Santastico Reply
    March 4, 2023 at 10:03 am

    Lithium batteries are the worst nightmare of any fire department. They are basically impossible to extinguish the fire and will cause huge damage. This was a small one but unfortunately inside a plane. Now imagine a fire in an electric car. Just search for “ The Felicity Ace”. A colleague of mine had his detached garage burned down due to fire from a lithium battery. Both cars and everything else totally gone. And the ones trying to “save the planet” are pushing electric cars like crazy without all the infrastructure, guidance and measures in place so one can expect more and more disasters with lithium batteries in the news.

    • Billy Bob Reply
      March 4, 2023 at 12:01 pm

      Yes, good thing an internal combustion engine car has never caught fire, at least we can always rely on that old technology… as long as we don’t run out of dead dinosaurs

      As for the firefighter on board, good thing he’s retired if he tried putting water on it… does he also recommend putting out grease fires with water?

      • AJ Reply
        March 4, 2023 at 12:17 pm

        Dinosaurs? Please. Lol. Anyway the new tech doesn’t seem to be that much better if batteries are spontaneously combusting:

        Tesla ‘spontaneously’ combusts, needs 6,000 gallons of water to extinguish fire

        “Nothing unusual” occurred ahead of the electric vehicle’s battery compartment “spontaneously” catching fire, Metro Fire of Sacramento said in a statement posted to social media.

        https://twitter.com/metrofirepio/status/1619537787270893569

      • Santastico Reply
        March 4, 2023 at 1:25 pm

        @Billy Bob: did you happen to have Pearl Nelson as your nurse as well?

        • AJ Reply
          March 4, 2023 at 9:39 pm

          Just saw that clip. Had no idea what you were referring to at first, lol. Why is he like that.

      • jm Reply
        March 5, 2023 at 3:11 pm

        The water is to cool it off. If you put the fire out with Halon or similar, the fire will just reignite. That was the correct airline procedure.

    • Jake K Reply
      March 4, 2023 at 3:43 pm

      This is a real concern, especially for very large capacity ones in cars and Powerwall-like home storage systems, because of the catastrophic damages they can cause. To put this likelihood into context though, I believe the risk of a lithium-ion battery failure/fire – that include all lithium-ion batteries for every application – is around 0.00001% (1 in 10M). For electric vehicle lithium-ion batteries, the risk is much higher due to collisions often being the instigator, at around 0.025% (251 in 1M). However, for gas vehicles, it is around 1.53% (15,299 in 1M), so the risk of a car battery fire is several orders of magnitude less. Battery fires can be much more devastating though, so current development efforts for solid-state lithium batteries are very promising.

      • AJ Reply
        March 4, 2023 at 4:03 pm

        Lithium Mining Projects May Not Be Green Friendly – The New York Times

        While producing 66,000 tons a year of battery-grade lithium carbonate, the mine may cause groundwater contamination with metals including antimony and arsenic, according to federal documents..

        https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/06/business/lithium-mining-race.html

        • AJ Reply
          March 4, 2023 at 4:04 pm

          The lithium extraction process uses a lot of water—approximately 500,000 gallons per metric ton of lithium. To extract lithium, miners drill a hole in salt flats and pump salty, mineral-rich brine to the surface. After several months the water evaporates, leaving a mixture of manganese, potassium, borax and lithium salts which is then filtered and placed into another evaporation pool. After between 12 and 18 months of this process, the mixture is filtered sufficiently that lithium carbonate can be extracted.

          South America’s Lithium Triangle, which covers parts of Argentina, Bolivia and Chile, holds more than half the world’s supply of the metal beneath its salt flats. But it is also one of the driest places on earth. In Chile’s Salar de Atacama, mining activities consumed 65 percent of the region’s water, which is having a large impact on local farmers to the point that some communities have to get water elsewhere.

          As in Tibet, there is the potential for toxic chemicals to leak from the evaporation pools into the water supply including hydrochloric acid, which is used in the processing of lithium, and waste products that are filtered out of the brine.

          Lithium extraction harms the soil and causes air contamination. In Argentina’s Salar de Hombre Muerto, residents believe that lithium operations contaminated streams used by humans and livestock and for crop irrigation. In Chile, the landscape is marred by mountains of discarded salt and canals filled with contaminated water with an unnatural blue hue. According to Guillermo Gonzalez, a lithium battery expert from the University of Chile, “This isn’t a green solution – it’s not a solution at all.”

          https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/the-environmental-impact-of-lithium-batteries/

          • Average Republican
            March 4, 2023 at 6:18 pm

            That’s to much too read. All you need two know is these batteries are WOKE. Get rid of em!

          • AJ
            March 4, 2023 at 8:49 pm

            The horrible conditions in these mines are more disturbing than woke. Why is it okay to have citizens of third world countries working in slave like conditions.. for batteries?

            https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/business/batteries/congo-cobalt-mining-for-lithium-ion-battery/img/congo0221473977055.jpg

          • Average Republican
            March 4, 2023 at 9:39 pm

            Nothing is worse then being woke. Ron DeSantis said Republicans are like potted plants when it comes to battling wokeness. We need a real warrior in the white house to battle it. Maybe he can force woke people to work in the battery mines. Everyone that he determines as woke will be punished, no trials. That is true freedom!

          • AJ
            March 4, 2023 at 9:41 pm

            The only way Desantis gets to the White House is as Trump’s VP, imo. I often wonder if their war is just for theater. Probably.

          • Chad
            March 4, 2023 at 10:22 pm

            @ Average Republican

            Is this lefty humor?

    • Stuart Reply
      March 5, 2023 at 1:32 am

      Santastico seems to have “friends” and “colleagues” who fit every narrative he is trying to espouse. He’s truly become the Right Wing version of, “The fish was THIS BIG!” I bet half your “friends” and “colleagues” were at Trump’s record breaking inauguration. Given there were “MILLIONS there” and, because you seem to have “MILLIONS” of odd anecdotes, I see a connection.

      Wait, omg, Trump often uses the, “I have a friend” line as well. Santastico, are you Trump?

  3. DW Reply
    March 4, 2023 at 1:06 pm

    So a cabin full of smoke and the oxygen masks don’t deploy sending 10 people to hospital. WTF is up with that? Can they not manually deploy them?

    • AJ Reply
      March 4, 2023 at 1:11 pm

      Would need a pilot or someone with more expertise to weigh in on that but yes they can be manually deployed. https://i.postimg.cc/C5bVCHnk/main-qimg-8602bd2eee80481b99b58fab51963c15-c.jpg

    • DP Reply
      March 4, 2023 at 2:15 pm

      You do not want to add more oxygen to a fire situation! Oxygen Masks are for decompressions. Not fires.

      • AJ Reply
        March 4, 2023 at 2:34 pm

        TY–makes sense

    • Flyer1 Reply
      March 4, 2023 at 2:51 pm

      @DW..yes masks can be deployed manually by a switch in the cockpit but will not be done if a suspected fire is onboard. They deploy automatically if the cabin altitude reaches 14,000 ft. Flight attendants can manually open any compartments that do not drop masks when required.

  4. Twinkle Reply
    March 4, 2023 at 2:20 pm

    Doesn’t Spirit have fire extinguishers?

  5. chasgoose Reply
    March 4, 2023 at 2:28 pm

    Why did they divert to JAX if they were coming from DFW? Wouldn’t that be overshooting MCO?

  6. ATC Chick Reply
    March 11, 2023 at 2:10 pm

    Does anyone remember the UPS 747 that went down across the pond and killed the crew as a result of lithium batteries?
    Sad, sad, sad, spouses devastated, children without fathers, “Progress””, right

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