Following explosions of Samsung Galaxy Note 7 smartphones, airlines are taking steps to protect their planes from mobile devices with fire-suppressing systems.

Three US airlines have started rolling out new fire-containment bags capable of sealing up an overheating smartphone or laptop battery to prevent a disaster mid-air.

The bright red bags are made of a fire-resistant material and are designed to hold electronic devices such as mobile phones and laptops. The bags, which retail for $1,800 (£1,475) each, can be shut with Velcro and heavy-duty zippers to withstand temperatures up to 1,760C.

Virgin America installed fire-containment bags on all its 60 or so planes, while Seattle-based Alaska Airlines finished adding them to its 219 planes in May.

Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines said that it too would be adding such bags to its more than 900 planes, prioritising the 166 aircraft that cross oceans, as well as some Boeing 757s used for domestic flights, which will have two of the bags each by the end of the year.

“This has been on the to-do list, but has been accelerated by recent events,” said Morgan Durrant, communications manager for Delta.

Other airlines, including American Airlines, JetBlue Airways, Southwest Airlines and United Airlines, have yet to deploy the bags, but do have aircrew training and fire extinguishers to deal with high-energy fires mid-flight.

The issue of potentially dangerous lithium-ion batteries within electronics on aeroplanes has taken on new urgency following incidents of overheating Samsung Galaxy Note 7 phones, including one on a Southwest Airlines flight earlier this month.

The US Federal Aviation Administration took the unusual step of warning passengers not to use or charge Note 7 devices while on board and not to stow them in checked luggage. Other aviation authorities took similar steps, while airlines have been warning passengers both at airports and before take off to switch off the phones and not to charge them.

In February the UN’s aviation agency prohibited cargo shipments of lithium-ion batteries on passenger aircraft over concerns by pilots and plane makers that they are a fire risk. Boeing also had issues with lithium-ion batteries built into its 787 Dreamliners that caught fire, forcing changes to the battery design that took five days to perform per plane.