The Man Who Once Ran KLM Set Its Business Class on Fire

KLM flight KL735 left Amsterdam Schiphol for Curacao on Thursday September 17 and never got there. Roughly two and a half hours into the crossing, a lithium power bank being charged at a business class seat on the Boeing 777-300ER caught fire with a bang loud enough to carry through the cabin, sending flames up the side wall and window area. Cabin crew extinguished it and the aircraft turned back, landing at Schiphol at about 8.42pm after more than five hours in the air. KLM put all 322 passengers in hotels and flew them out the following morning.

The detail that turned a routine lithium-battery incident into an international story is whose battery it was. Dutch outlets identified the passenger as Camiel Eurlings, KLM’s president and chief executive from July 2013 to October 2014 and a former Dutch transport minister. He was reportedly charging the device while asleep and sustained minor injuries. KLM’s published rules permit up to two power banks in carry-on baggage, require them to remain visible, and prohibit using them in flight. A spokesperson said the airline does not plan to fine him.

The rule he broke is not arbitrary. Lithium cells in thermal runaway generate their own oxygen, burn hot enough to damage seat structure, and can reignite after being put out, which is why crews are trained to smother them and then keep them in sight rather than stow them away. Power banks are barred from checked baggage and increasingly barred from in-flight use because a fire in an occupied cabin can be dealt with in seconds while a fire in a hold cannot. Several Asian carriers tightened their rules sharply through 2025 and 2026 for exactly this reason.

For passengers the takeaway is unromantic: use the seat’s own power outlet. Charging a power bank in flight is the highest-risk thing most travellers do with a battery, because a cell under charge is a cell under stress, and doing it while asleep removes the one safeguard the rules quietly depend on, which is a person noticing. The incident also cost KLM a widebody out of service, 322 hotel rooms and a transatlantic sector flown twice — a bill that comfortably exceeds whatever the fine would have been.

Sources: NL Times, DutchNews.nl