I am confident that Oliver Jankai, one of the passengers evacuating an American Airlines flight to Miami on Friday will probably never forget the weekend he just had.

Whether he was a hero, a hindrance or both, is less certain. Watch the videos and decide for yourself.

The 50-year-old Austrian and his family were passengers on Flight 2045 scheduled to depart San Francisco at noon on Friday. They were headed to the Copa America soccer final in Miami (about which more later) when fire erupted on the plane, an Airbus A321, which was still parked at the gate.

In an interview with a Miami television station, Jankai said the fire started in a bag stored under his seat. He and his son, Jan tried to stomp out the flames but could not. They asked the flight attendant for a fire extinguisher but were told there was none.

“Finally my son said ‘Okay, we got to open the door’, because there was a lot of smoke. And she said “No, no, don’t open the door.’ And he still opened the door,” Jankai said. “And then I just shoot it out of the plane. And that’s about it.”

Firefighters then retrieved the bag from where Jankai had tossed it and deposited it and its contents into a large container of water. This is the same tactic a flight attendant would use if a battery smoked or ignited on a flight. It won’t stop the burning but slows overheating which can lead to thermal runaway and explosions.

Things might have been under control on the ground but the drama was just getting started onboard Flight 2045.

As you will see in the videos below, the flight attendant at the back of the plane began herding Jankai and others gathered by the aft door through which the battery was pitched toward the front. She was bellowing evacuation instructions.  “Go out! Go out that way! Go forward, go forward! Do not take your bag!”

But the aisle appears to have been jammed because no one was making any progress toward the open doors and emergency slides 20 or 30 feet ahead of them.

You can see that after 15 seconds, Jankai turns back to the flight attendant in what appears to be an attempt to explain that the fire-generating battery was no longer in the airplane. “It was just this f-ing…Its out. Its out,” he says, adding, “It was a battery, whatever.”

In a firm but reasonable tone, the flight attendant responds, “That’s okay, you still have to evacuate.”

Jankai and at least another 5 others in the knot of people in front of the flight attendant can be seen fiddling with stuff in their seats and in the overhead bins fueling frustration from those behind. Could they have moved toward the exits if they tried? It does not appear so. But based on comments posted below the interview with Jankai, he was not part of the solution anymore. He was part of the problem.

“He didn’t act quickly. He disobeyed the flight attendant’s clear instructions multiple times which could have lead (sic) to disaster,”  Rohan Ellis commented. Dalmita Hernandez wrote, “Have (sic) they been fueling the aircraft when he throw (sic) that bag this could have been a disaster and who knows how many lives that would have cost.”

I present these tense minutes on Flight 2045 because Jankai’s role creates an interesting ambiguity and challenges the conclusion that selfish/thoughtless/reckless passengers delayed the evacuation. The video doesn’t appear to support that. What is made abundantly clear, however, is that this airplane was not evacuated within the 90-second limit imposed by air safety regulators.

It shows that it took nearly 3 minutes for the aisle ahead of those seated in the back of the plane to clear so they could begin moving toward the exits. If the other factors that contributed to the delay aren’t identified and addressed, the next battery to go kaflooey might take passengers with it.

American Airlines did not reply to an email seeking clarification. Earlier, it reported that a member of the crew had disposed of the smoking laptop. American also failed to respond to questions about whether it would review the circumstances of Flight 2045 to determine if the process could have been handled faster.

The hazards of lithium-ion batteries on airplanes are well known. The smoke is toxic and the microscopically small, naturally-occurring dendrites that grow inside cells can trigger internal electrical shorts that generate temperatures between 5,000-10,000 degrees Fahrenheit. To make that impossibly high number even more frightening, consider this: lithium-ion battery-powered devices outnumber passengers at least three times over on nearly every commercial flight.

Lithium ion battery fire in an airplane galley cart

While we are on the subject of hot temperatures and hot tempers, what kind of weekend did Oliver Jankai and his kids enjoy after their San Francisco airport adventure?

Their destination was the Copa America Final, a soccer match pitting Argentina against Colombia at the capacious 65-thousand-seat Hard Rock Stadium.  But even before the start of the game on Sunday, crowds broke down gates and barricades and swarmed into the stadium. Dozens pried open air ducts and crawled through them to access the spectator section. Twenty-seven people were arrested following the near-stampede.

What are the chances the Jankais would go from a fire to a frying pan? With any luck, their seats at the latter were far from the action.