ABU DHABI // UAE civil aviation officials addressed safety concerns of the air transport of lithium batteries during a Dubai workshop on Tuesday.
The General Civil Aviation Authority event comes after Samsung halted production and sales of its Galaxy Note 7 smartphones because of reports that some users’ batteries overheated and exploded.
Such events are crucial to ensure knowledge sharing and collaboration, and to ensure more safe and secure methods of transporting dangerous goods by air, said Saif Al Suwaidi, the authority’s director general.
Despite being the primary power source for electronic devices – such as mobile phones, laptops and watches – lithium batteries have been found to overheat and ignite during transportation as a result of their irregular manufacturing, misuse, mishandling, improper packaging, overcharging or defectiveness.
Testing by the US Federal Aviation Administration has shown that fires caused by batteries overheating can evade current aircraft fire protection systems and lead to major damage and disasters.
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