Sleeping Passenger’s Headphone Batteries Explode on Flight from Beijing

March 15, 2017

A woman boarding a flight from Beijing to Melbourne suffered burns on her face and hands when her battery-powered headphones exploded while she was sleeping.

She was lulling herself to music two hours into the February 19 trip when the incident happened, Shanghaiist reported. Apparently, it’s literally like waking up to a nightmare.

Flight attendants of the unidentified airline immediately poured water onto the headphones, which quickly melted on the plane’s floor. The rest of the passengers had to bear with the unpleasant scent of liquefied plastic and seared hair.

The woman told the Australian Transport Safety Bureau:

“As I went to turn around I felt burning on my face. I just grabbed my face which caused the headphones to go around my neck. I continued to feel burning so I grabbed them off and threw them on the floor. They were sparking and had small amounts of fire.

“As I went to stamp my foot on them the flight attendants were already there with a bucket of water to pour on them. They put them into the bucket at the rear of the plane.”

Without naming brands, the bureau identified the headphones’ lithium-ion batteries as the root of the explosion.

This incident adds to our list of battery-related explosions, the most recent of which involved a five-year-old girl who sustained facial burns after sleeping next to a Samsung Galaxy Note 4 that blew up.

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