Airport officials call for e-cigarettes to be banned from carry on luggage after smoldering bag is removed from flight

Airport officials in Massachusetts are calling for e-cigarettes to be added to the list of hazardous materials

Follows a smoldering bag being removed from a JetBlue flight at Boston's Logan International Airport on Saturday

Fire marshals believe that a rechargeable lithium-ion battery in an e-cigarette inside the bag was to blame

The director of aviation at the Massachusetts Port Authority said he believes lithium-ion batteries pose a hazard to flyers

Airport officials in Massachusetts are calling for e-cigarettes to be added to the list of hazardous materials banned from being carried onto airplanes after a smoldering bag had to be removed from a flight.

Baggage handlers at Boston's Logan International Airport pulled the bag off a JetBlue flight on Saturday and put it out with a hand-held extinguisher after first evacuating all passengers.



Fire marshals believe that a rechargeable lithium-ion battery in an e-cigarette inside the bag was to blame.

Airport officials in Massachusetts are calling for e-cigarettes to be added to the list of hazardous materials banned from being carried onto airplanes after a smoldering bag had to be removed from a flight

A fire marshal spokesperson told the New York Times that 'if a battery had been in the e-cigarette, it had the potential to cause a fire.'



Ed Freni, director of aviation at the Massachusetts Port Authority, said he believes that lithium-ion batteries pose a hazard to flyers.

‘The more you see these type of items sold out there, the more our industry has to take a closer look at them, as we’ve done with other hazardous materials,’ he said.



The list of banned items, controlled by the Transportation Department’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, currently includes matches, flares and most batteries that are ‘spillable.’

Baggage handlers at Boston's Logan International Airport, pictured, pulled the bag off a JetBlue flight on Saturday and put it out with a hand-held extinguisher after first evacuating all passengers

Officials from the airport have already met with local Federal Aviation Administration inspectors to ask for an investigation into the incident.



Passengers on the plane - an Embraer 190 - were taken off via the regular passenger door, before all the bags were removed and checked. The delayed flight eventually flew to Buffalo.

Concerns about lithium-ion batteries to date have focused on the possibility that one would suffer an internal flaw that would cause it to heat up, and the heat would set off nearby batteries in a runaway reaction.



A commercial shipment of 1,000 e-cigarettes was blamed for a fire on a FedEx MD-11 at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport in August 2009.



In January 2013, a lithium-ion battery on a Japan Airlines plane ignited while the aircraft, a Boeing 787, was parked at a gate at Logan.

