Power Bank Blast Injures 5 on Mohali IndiGo Flight
- IndiGo flight 6E108 from Hyderabad to Chandigarh was evacuated on May 5 after a passenger’s power bank caught fire while the aircraft sat on the ground. - The fire was contained by cabin crew, but the slide evacuation left five to six passengers with mostly minor injuries, including one ankle fracture. - The scare matters because lithium-battery failures can escalate fast in cabins, even after landing, turning routine taxiing into an emergency.
An ordinary landing turned into a cabin-fire scare in Chandigarh on May 5. IndiGo flight 6E108 had already landed from Hyderabad and was stationary on the ground when a passenger’s personal electronic device — widely reported as a power bank — caught fire. Smoke spread in the cabin, crew moved fast, and passengers were evacuated using emergency slides. The fire itself stayed small. The chaos came from how fast a lithium-battery incident can turn a normal post-landing moment into a full evacuation. (ndtv.com) ### What exactly happened? The clearest version is this: the aircraft landed safely at Shaheed Bhagat Singh International Airport near Mohali, then the device ignited while the plane was still on the ground. IndiGo said the incident involved a customer’s personal electronic equipment catching fire after landing, and that authorities (ndtv.com)t triggered by a portable battery. (ndtv.com) ### Why did passengers evacuate if the fire was small? Because smoke inside an aircraft cabin is treated as a real emergency, even when the source looks limited. A burning lithium-ion battery can flare, reignite, and release dense, irritating smoke very quickly. Crew are trained to prioritize getting people off the aircraft if there (ndtv.com) the risky option. (ndtv.com) ### How many people were hurt? That is the one detail still moving around. Several reports put the number at five injured, while others say six. The injuries appear to have happened during the emergency evacuation rather than from the fire itself, and one passenger was reported to have suffered an ankle or leg fracture. The rest were(ndtv.com)ides. (indianexpress.com) ### Was this really a “blast”? Maybe not in the way that word usually lands. Early reports use “blast” or “explosion,” but the more consistent description is that the power bank caught fire and filled the cabin with smoke. That fits how failing lithium batteries often behave — overheating, venting, sparking, and sometimes popping (indianexpress.com)e created heat, flame, and smoke inside the aircraft. (economictimes.indiatimes.com) ### Why are power banks such a problem on planes? Because they store a lot of energy in a small package, and when they fail, they fail fast. That is why airlines and aviation regulators treat spare lithium batteries di(economictimes.indiatimes.com)news18.com) ### Did the crew do the right thing? From what is public so far, yes. The crew reportedly contained the fire and then evacuated the aircraft. That two-step response matters — first stop the immediate hazard, then get everyone out before smoke or heat can worsen. IndiGo has framed the evacuation as a safety-first decision, which lines up with standard airline logic in any onboard fire event. (ndtv.com) ### What happens next? Authorities will likely focus on the device itself — what kind it was, whether it was damaged, and what exactly triggered the failure. The airline incident review will also look at the evacuation, because slide evacuations can cause injuries even when they work as intended. That is the catch with these events: the fire may be small, but the emergency response still carries real physical risk. (ndtv.com) ### Bottom line This was a post-landing battery fire, not an air-crash scare. But it still injured passengers and forced a rapid evacuation. That is why airlines obsess over lithium batteries — not because every power bank is dangerous, but because when one goes bad, the margin for error is tiny. (ndtv.com)
