SaferProducts incident

Failure type

Fire / ignition

Incident narrative

SaferProducts.gov consumer incident report 20220823-C5B53-2147354252. Severity: Incident, No Injury. Product: Vortex Vortex 5.7 QT (5.7 QT Air Fryer). Incident: Something scary just happened with my Instant Pot Vortex air fryer. I reported this to the manufacturer as well. I turned my air fryer on and set the time and temperature. Then I walked away doing other things, waiting for the beep saying it was ready for food. This is the normal way to operate this air fryer, you preheat it and it beeps when it is ready (and the timer begins.) Even if you walk away, the oven eventually preheats and the timer starts (and the air fryer turns off when the timer is done.) There is no way to "keep it running" indefinetely. So anyway 20 or so minutes later, I realized the beep never happened. The air fryer still said "on" and was still preheating. The scary thing is the cord was hot and when I unplugged it, the plug was hot. Hot enough to blister you. Certainly something that could cause a fire. It's almost like the heater turned on and just stayed on, but there was nothing inside to take all the heat! And since it was stuck in pre-heat mode, it kept getting hotter and hotter and hotter. When I say the plug was hot enough to blister, I'm not kidding. If I had not found it when I did, there would have been a fire.