A frightening moment or two when a woman found her headphones on fire as she rested on a flight from Beijing to Melbourne recently. This is reported by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) which for reasons unknown did not identify the make of the earphones. The woman felt burning, threw off the headset and flight attendants used a fire extinguisher on the device. The fire was accompanied by a loud explosion. “As I went to turn around I felt burning on my face,” she said. “I just grabbed my face which caused the headphones to go around my neck,” the ATSB quoted the unidentified passenger as saying. “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.” In the statement, the ATSB said it “assessed that the batteries in the device likely caught on fire.”
