The FAA's cabin-safety guidance tells passengers and crews to keep lithium batteries where a thermal runaway would be visible and accessible. A power bank in your lap or seat-back pocket does that. The same power bank buried in an overhead…

A Halon extinguisher can knock down the visible flames from a lithium battery fire, but it can't stop the chemical reaction burning inside the cell. That reaction — thermal runaway — keeps generating its own heat and oxygen even after…

When a lithium-ion battery in a phone, laptop, or power bank overheats in the cabin, flight attendants run a two-stage protocol: knock down visible flames with a halon extinguisher, then soak the device with water or another non-alcoholic liquid to…