Today, Virgin Atlantic said certain Lenovo machines will join Dell and Apple models in being banned from use in its cabins, lest their Sony powerpacks explode.

That Lenovo’s recall of 500,000 batteries – taking the total of recalled Sony batteries close to 7 million – came after a laptop started smoking in Los Angeles International airport underlined the potential dangers. But could the fiasco down Sony?

The company reckoned Dell and Apple recall costs could reach ¥30 billion (£136m) – equivalent to about a quarter of Sony’s net profits last year – and today's ill-defined global battery relacement scheme raises the prospects of that figure being breached.

The timing is bad: Sony already expects operating profits this year to be halved by a ¥100 billion (£454m) loss from its delayed PlayStation 3 project.

This spring, Sony looked in reasonably good shape after a string of disappointing results. With the stock down 9 per cent since news of the first battery recall in mid-August, it now looks perilously close to another messy crash landing.

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