Many airlines are going much further than this, for instance Virgin Atlantic ban you from either charging or charging from any power bank, and you can't keep them in the overhead locker, you must keep them next to you in case it starts burning spontaneously!
They have a "fire containment bag" they can chuck it in should you notice it getting hot or smoking.
Crazy thing about these bags is that they're just containment. Once the thermal runaway has started, it's very hard to start as it brings its own oxygen, heat and fuel.
Hence why many places bring a container filled with water to extinguish an EV fire, and then probably send it to a wet shredder to make sure it doesn't re-ignite.
My company distributed buckets filled with cat litter for containment to every branch office.
We cut the rate of fire (already low) in half by containing compromised batteries. It’s something like 0.02%-0.03% which is significant given the massive scope. Something like 200k devices and about 3% with battery issues of all types.
When you think about the number of flights, passengers with lithium batters and challenges of the airplane environment, it’s a hard problem. We’re lucky the engineering around these devices are as good as it is.
While I definitely approve this and consider the limit to be one too many, I wish ecigarettes would be rather the target as soon as possible. Those are dangerous, and lately the most potential culprit for lithium related problems aboard.
Interesting... anyone know if they've released the rationale/data behind this? I could see a few reasons why power banks present a larger risk than phones/computers (battery capacity, quality control), but it seems like the 100Wh battery limit already covers one of these.
In a similar vein, China banned non-CCC certified (the equivalent to UL or CE) power banks on flights from 2025, which seems to be targeting the quality control side of the problem. Not just on paper - the security officers inspected every lithium battery I was carrying, even the one in my flashlight.
Phones tend to be designed by companies competent enough to design a phone. There's a skill floor required that just doesn't exist for power banks.
Another reason is that phones get replaced more frequently, whereas a power bank will be continually used essentially until failure. I only stopped using my last power bank because it puffed up like a balloon.
But yes, probably where this is all headed is that some day in-seat power will be banned so that you can only discharge and not charge your devices.
> While data indicated that portable electronic devices were more often the cause of fire in aircraft cabins than power banks were, the latter were a significant concern due to their increased use and a prevalence of lower-quality products with defects or vulnerabilities that were more likely to lead to thermal events. Power banks were also not offered the same level of protection that batteries installed in portable electronic devices were provided. The amendments therefore focused on power banks.
Another possibility is that you tend to keep an eye on where your phone and laptop are; there have been some plane fires where people drop a phone into a seat and it ends up getting bent, but at least they notice it fairly quickly.
(Will people know the direction if their USB-C power bank is charging from their phone or their phone is charging from their power bank?)
Look up Air Busan Flight 391, a power bank in someone's carryon caused the entire plane to burn down in 5 minutes. The airplane (an Airbus A321) was destroyed. The only reason there was not total loss of life was because the plane hadn't taken off yet.
This could happen with any battery-powered device though. But I don't see ICAO or FAA banning e.g. laptops any time soon, even though they may carry more energy than a single power bank.
It seems to me that compared to your phone, a power brick dangling off a charging cable is much more likely to slip off your lap unnoticed and get wedged in the seat hinge only to get subsequently punctured.
I recently took a flight where I had a laptop, my phone, a power brick, a new power brick for my wife, a second phone (for reasons) and a battery for a piece of ham radio equipment in my backpack. As I got on the plane, I was thinking I was probably one of the risker passengers on board :) Anyway, when I use the brick, I keep it zipped in a jacket pocket with just the charing cable coming out in an effort to keep it from finding its way to a place that it shouldn't.
> I could see a few reasons why power banks present a larger risk than phones/computers (battery capacity, quality control), but it seems like the 100Wh battery limit already covers one of these.
Yeah, and it's the other one that is the main problem. It is simply impossible to know the quality of a power bank by looking at it.
> China banned non-CCC certified (the equivalent to UL or CE)
And it costs nothing to stamp the logo as if you're certified without actually going through any certification. Powerbanks are almost expendable, and can be acquried from supermarkets, corner shops, airports, even night clubs. There are even disposable ones (horrible idea). The more complex and expensive the device (like a laptop), the more certain can you be that there will be at least some quality control. In a $5/5eur powerbank, which any one could potentially be, it's almost guaranteeed there would be none.
Not really worried about the Chinese. As was pointed out, they just hang a sword of damocles over the head of every entrepreneur and engineer who even thinks about doing something like that.
What about power banks from India? Vietnam? Malaysia? Korea?
That's what I'm saying. If there are nations where you can get away with it, then those power banks can end up in Western, African or South American markets.
(I'm counting getting a fine, or paying a bribe, as getting away with it. I don't really consider those punishments that will provide sufficient deterrent.)
Fingers crossed the Donut Lab solid state battery ends up being the real deal, lives up to the hype, and this sillyness can finally go away. Recent tests look promising from a (lack of a) thermal runaway standpoint at least.
The only question is if the rules will mind the difference in battery composition and chemistry.
I wasn't sure what a solid state battery is, so I looked it up on Wikipedia.
Fun fact though:
> Between 1831 and 1834, Michael Faraday discovered the solid electrolytes silver sulfide and lead(II) fluoride, which laid the foundation for solid-state ionics. Through his research, Michael Faraday took note of these solid compounds transitioning from insulators to conductors after being heated. While this would take almost another century to be acknowledged by Michael O'Keeffe in 1976, this mixed ionic/electronic conductions became the first record of a solid-state battery
Most of the solid state batteries have far less thermal runaway problem than lithium-ion batteries. At this point, several companies have working demo solid state batteries, but the price is far too high. Mercedes has one demo car with a solid state battery. Ducati has one motorcycle.
Donut Labs just has one demo cell, not even enough for their motorcycle. The technology works but is so expensive there aren't even multiple prototypes.
Samsung says they will ship some solid state batteries in watches and earbuds this year, where the batteries are so tiny they're affordable. Even solid state batteries for phones are still too costly.
Everybody in the industry is trying to solve the production price problem.
Consensus is that the price starts to come down around 2028 or so.
Lithium iron phosphate batteries don't have a thermal runaway problem, either, but they have about half the Wh/Kg of lithium-ion, so they're not popular for portable devices.
Ten years out, lithium-ion batteries will probably be obsolete technology and totally prohibited on aircraft.
Afaik sodium batteries are much safer than li-ion and already in mass production. Unless Donut scales up really quick I think it will be more viable to just use sodium batteries for safety in the medium-term future
Limiting the devices to two per person seems nonsensical to me. The devices are either dangerous, or they're not. If they're dangerous, two is too many. And if they're not, then why limit them only to two?
> The devices are either dangerous, or they're not
That's not actually how it works though, it's all a risk and percentages. Nobody says "driving is either safe or it's not" or "delivering a baby is either safe or it's not"
Correct, but I agree with the parent that this is a dubious case to apply that reasoning.
To make it clearer, imagine another context: "It's dangerous for a passenger to have a gun on board. Therefore, we're strictly limiting passengers to only two guns."
Like, no. The relevant sad case is present with one gun just as with two.
Of course, what complicates it is that these power banks present a small but relevant risk of burning and killing everyone on board. So yeah, you might be below the risk threshold if everyone brought two, but not three. So it's not inherently a stupid idea, but requires a really precise risk calculation to justify that figure.
This is the first decent answer, which I appreciate. And while my comparison to a bomb may have been over the top, I don't think a comparison to shampoo is fair either. And in any case, I'm not so sure whether the limit on toiletries is all that sensical either.
More batteries, more likely that you'll have even just one of them fail. Since even one of them (to your point) failing is enough of a reason to divert the flight, better to start by reducing the probability of that happening in ways people can swallow.
So having 500 batteries on board is okay.. but 750 is too risky? I just have a hard time believing that the math is actually mathing in this case. Maybe you're right, and this is just a first step to get people to gradually accept more restrictions.
These items are dangerous. The FAA limit for power bank capacity is 100Wh (~27000mAh), which is 360kJ of energy. A hand grenade has approximately 700-800 kJ of energy.
Two powerbanks contain the same amount of energy as a hand grenade.
That's a kind of meaningless comparison. Peanuts are about 8kJ per gram supposedly, by your measure we should ban even small amounts of peanuts on planes because 100 grams of them contain more energy than a hand grenade. Without talking about the time frame over which the energy can be released you'd have to make sure that everybody went onto the plane completely naked lest their clothes ignited.
Not good enough, body fat contains about 35kJ per gram. So nobody with over 1lb of excess body should be allowed on board. People are known to occasionally spontaneously combust.
Maybe there is enough plane onboard capacity to deal with just 50 batteries, let's say; multiply the failure rate expected and the pax capacity of the plane and you get how many batteries you can afford to have onboard and still be able to deal with worst case scenario.
Do you save your snark for batteries only, or are you equally liberally minded with your non-binary thinking about the number of bombs allowed on board?
It's not fallacious, it focuses the issue, and in this particular case shows that it's not about "binary thinking" it's about risk.
And my original puzzlement continues. At what level of risk, does limiting the number of devices on board to 500 or even more, actually accomplish anything?
If they're not all that dangerous, then why limit them at all? And if they're dangerous enough to limit at all, why in God's blue sky, would you allow that many of them on a plane?
We don't limit people to 1 knife per person, even though knives have utility to a lot of people who carry one with them every day.
Because it's a numbers game... the original order itself even acknowledges that the problem is not unique to power banks, but that what makes power banks unique is the amount of increased risk they pose compared to other devices, due to a higher ubiquity of them in general, and of low-quality unsafe ones.
If laptops were catching fire with the same frequency, they'd ban those too, but they're not. They technically can be made just as unsafe as power banks, but they usually aren't, and this directive is based on the frequency of occurrence of a particular type of device, not a general "what if" strategy.
Banning all electronic devices would be extremely unpopular and possibly tank their sales. They're trying to balance safety with convenience at a level that is acceptable to most people.
If there are 20 battery banks on board a plane, each possessed by a different person:
* Less likely to be of the same low quality
* Less likely to all go off
* Less likely that someone is doing something malicious/suspicious with it
vs. someone who has 20 power banks themselves in a bag, in which case if one of them catches fire unexpectedly, they will probably all go up at once and create a cumulative effect much more dangerous than 20 individuals.
Some airlines and/or local aviation authorities have additional restrictions. China wants CCC certified power banks, Thailand has a strict 160 Wh limit. Both are very strictly enforced.
Power banks were a mistake. It's akin to carrying fireworks in your bag. Ban them all from air travel.
Every one I have owned has been recalled for being a fire hazard. EVERY SINGLE ONE. I stopped buying them as a result. We're talking name brand devices, not junk off AliExpress.
I've never had any issues with brand name, not dollar store power banks and I've been using them for more than a decade. I'd totally expect a $5 pink power bank from a alphabet amazon seller to be an issue, but anything modern and reasonable like Anker are very unlikely to cause you any issues. Balancing, protection are very much solved issues at this point for the cell chemistries we use.
If LiPo was the issue, using LiFePo4 or LTO cells for planes would be a totally reasonable alternative too. LTO cells are so safe the manufacturer of them has videos on youtube of them hammering nails into the cells, cutting them with a saw, and crushing them with a press and they don't really care.
That's a bit surprising to me, wonder what the root cause of that was. It seems to be shared across multiple products at once so maybe they had a bad batch of cells?
I'm sure people do. People will buy the absolute shittiest things to save a buck. The power bank could come with a skull and crossbones painted on it, and have the product name "Deadly Explosive Power Bank" and people would still buy it if it was $10 cheaper than a reputable one.
It's great technology, but sadly humans are fucking morons, and dodgy manufacturers making explosive power banks has lead to the restrictions...
Although honestly how bad is it, powerbanks are very popular, I can imagine in some regions there'd be hundreds of flights taking off daily with 150+ power banks on board (the majority of passengers on a 737), and they've all landed safely.
In my city, I could scan a QR code and pay the parking meter that way. Now they've decomissioned this and you have to go to the app and select the section of the road you're parked at. Why, because scammers made scammy QR codes. Great tech, can't have them because humanity's inherent scumbaggery.
Phone batteries are typically smaller (less energy which can be violently dissipated) than most power banks.
Naturally you will ask, what about tablets and laptops? They are prohibited from checked luggage for this reason. Power banks however are smaller and easier to conceal.
The risk is really in a fire developing in your bag down below in cargo, where no one can see it. By the time the fire alarms go off, it's too late and good luck if you are over water or the Arctic. If it happens upstairs they can at least tend to it with a fire extinguisher or bag/blanket.
See ValuJet Flight 592, fire in an airplane's cargo hold is probably one of the scariest ways to slowly die.
It's all about corralling risk. You can't tell people they can't bring their laptops. But power banks are unnecessary nice-to-haves.
Laptops, at least in the US, are not banned in checked luggage[1]. The airlines may have different rules, but generally the airline is not the one inspecting your bag, TSA is.
And that itself is a recent policy change from just in the last two months; as of January United's official policy [1] matched the FAA's in only requiring checked devices to be powered down
Li-ion fires do not require external oxygen, the cathode decomposes to release its own oxygen gas during thermal runaway... fire extinguishers will not stop it.
Many airlines are going much further than this, for instance Virgin Atlantic ban you from either charging or charging from any power bank, and you can't keep them in the overhead locker, you must keep them next to you in case it starts burning spontaneously!
They have a "fire containment bag" they can chuck it in should you notice it getting hot or smoking.
https://www.virginatlantic.com/en-US/help/articles/powerbank...
Crazy thing about these bags is that they're just containment. Once the thermal runaway has started, it's very hard to start as it brings its own oxygen, heat and fuel.
Hence why many places bring a container filled with water to extinguish an EV fire, and then probably send it to a wet shredder to make sure it doesn't re-ignite.
My company distributed buckets filled with cat litter for containment to every branch office.
We cut the rate of fire (already low) in half by containing compromised batteries. It’s something like 0.02%-0.03% which is significant given the massive scope. Something like 200k devices and about 3% with battery issues of all types.
When you think about the number of flights, passengers with lithium batters and challenges of the airplane environment, it’s a hard problem. We’re lucky the engineering around these devices are as good as it is.
Pilot here.
While I definitely approve this and consider the limit to be one too many, I wish ecigarettes would be rather the target as soon as possible. Those are dangerous, and lately the most potential culprit for lithium related problems aboard.
Interesting... anyone know if they've released the rationale/data behind this? I could see a few reasons why power banks present a larger risk than phones/computers (battery capacity, quality control), but it seems like the 100Wh battery limit already covers one of these.
In a similar vein, China banned non-CCC certified (the equivalent to UL or CE) power banks on flights from 2025, which seems to be targeting the quality control side of the problem. Not just on paper - the security officers inspected every lithium battery I was carrying, even the one in my flashlight.
Phones tend to be designed by companies competent enough to design a phone. There's a skill floor required that just doesn't exist for power banks.
Another reason is that phones get replaced more frequently, whereas a power bank will be continually used essentially until failure. I only stopped using my last power bank because it puffed up like a balloon.
But yes, probably where this is all headed is that some day in-seat power will be banned so that you can only discharge and not charge your devices.
Galaxy Note 7 was a notable exception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy_Note_7#Battery_...
Discussion is included in the Dangerous Goods Panel report, agenda item 4.3 (pages 39-41) and Appendix E (beginning page 89). https://www.icao.int/sites/default/files/DangerousGoods/DGP%...
Paragraph 4.3.3:
> While data indicated that portable electronic devices were more often the cause of fire in aircraft cabins than power banks were, the latter were a significant concern due to their increased use and a prevalence of lower-quality products with defects or vulnerabilities that were more likely to lead to thermal events. Power banks were also not offered the same level of protection that batteries installed in portable electronic devices were provided. The amendments therefore focused on power banks.
Another possibility is that you tend to keep an eye on where your phone and laptop are; there have been some plane fires where people drop a phone into a seat and it ends up getting bent, but at least they notice it fairly quickly. (Will people know the direction if their USB-C power bank is charging from their phone or their phone is charging from their power bank?)
Look up Air Busan Flight 391, a power bank in someone's carryon caused the entire plane to burn down in 5 minutes. The airplane (an Airbus A321) was destroyed. The only reason there was not total loss of life was because the plane hadn't taken off yet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Busan_Flight_391
This could happen with any battery-powered device though. But I don't see ICAO or FAA banning e.g. laptops any time soon, even though they may carry more energy than a single power bank.
Have you seen what passes for quality on the random power banks sold by Amazon?
Random power banks are about the same quality as random USB drives.
It seems to me that compared to your phone, a power brick dangling off a charging cable is much more likely to slip off your lap unnoticed and get wedged in the seat hinge only to get subsequently punctured.
I recently took a flight where I had a laptop, my phone, a power brick, a new power brick for my wife, a second phone (for reasons) and a battery for a piece of ham radio equipment in my backpack. As I got on the plane, I was thinking I was probably one of the risker passengers on board :) Anyway, when I use the brick, I keep it zipped in a jacket pocket with just the charing cable coming out in an effort to keep it from finding its way to a place that it shouldn't.
> I could see a few reasons why power banks present a larger risk than phones/computers (battery capacity, quality control), but it seems like the 100Wh battery limit already covers one of these.
Yeah, and it's the other one that is the main problem. It is simply impossible to know the quality of a power bank by looking at it.
> China banned non-CCC certified (the equivalent to UL or CE)
And it costs nothing to stamp the logo as if you're certified without actually going through any certification. Powerbanks are almost expendable, and can be acquried from supermarkets, corner shops, airports, even night clubs. There are even disposable ones (horrible idea). The more complex and expensive the device (like a laptop), the more certain can you be that there will be at least some quality control. In a $5/5eur powerbank, which any one could potentially be, it's almost guaranteeed there would be none.
One deterrent is, in China corporate criminals are executed, like those who put melamine in infant formula.
That's awesome for consumers in China.
What about the rest of us?
That kind of fraud is oftentimes only a fine in many other nations.
Maybe we should get our governments to execute corporate criminals?
The Chinese fly internationally too. So there's some motivation to not have these in other countries.
Not really worried about the Chinese. As was pointed out, they just hang a sword of damocles over the head of every entrepreneur and engineer who even thinks about doing something like that.
What about power banks from India? Vietnam? Malaysia? Korea?
That's what I'm saying. If there are nations where you can get away with it, then those power banks can end up in Western, African or South American markets.
(I'm counting getting a fine, or paying a bribe, as getting away with it. I don't really consider those punishments that will provide sufficient deterrent.)
You can get away with it in the US, if you can get regulators to approve it.
Fingers crossed the Donut Lab solid state battery ends up being the real deal, lives up to the hype, and this sillyness can finally go away. Recent tests look promising from a (lack of a) thermal runaway standpoint at least.
The only question is if the rules will mind the difference in battery composition and chemistry.
I wasn't sure what a solid state battery is, so I looked it up on Wikipedia.
Fun fact though:
> Between 1831 and 1834, Michael Faraday discovered the solid electrolytes silver sulfide and lead(II) fluoride, which laid the foundation for solid-state ionics. Through his research, Michael Faraday took note of these solid compounds transitioning from insulators to conductors after being heated. While this would take almost another century to be acknowledged by Michael O'Keeffe in 1976, this mixed ionic/electronic conductions became the first record of a solid-state battery
(emphasis mine)
Most of the solid state batteries have far less thermal runaway problem than lithium-ion batteries. At this point, several companies have working demo solid state batteries, but the price is far too high. Mercedes has one demo car with a solid state battery. Ducati has one motorcycle. Donut Labs just has one demo cell, not even enough for their motorcycle. The technology works but is so expensive there aren't even multiple prototypes.
Samsung says they will ship some solid state batteries in watches and earbuds this year, where the batteries are so tiny they're affordable. Even solid state batteries for phones are still too costly. Everybody in the industry is trying to solve the production price problem. Consensus is that the price starts to come down around 2028 or so.
Lithium iron phosphate batteries don't have a thermal runaway problem, either, but they have about half the Wh/Kg of lithium-ion, so they're not popular for portable devices.
Ten years out, lithium-ion batteries will probably be obsolete technology and totally prohibited on aircraft.
What is your take on Lithium-Titanate (sp?) cells?
Afaik sodium batteries are much safer than li-ion and already in mass production. Unless Donut scales up really quick I think it will be more viable to just use sodium batteries for safety in the medium-term future
Was expecting to be annoyed but this seems reasonable. You can have 2 power banks and can't charge them during flight
Limiting the devices to two per person seems nonsensical to me. The devices are either dangerous, or they're not. If they're dangerous, two is too many. And if they're not, then why limit them only to two?
> The devices are either dangerous, or they're not
That's not actually how it works though, it's all a risk and percentages. Nobody says "driving is either safe or it's not" or "delivering a baby is either safe or it's not"
Correct, but I agree with the parent that this is a dubious case to apply that reasoning.
To make it clearer, imagine another context: "It's dangerous for a passenger to have a gun on board. Therefore, we're strictly limiting passengers to only two guns."
Like, no. The relevant sad case is present with one gun just as with two.
Of course, what complicates it is that these power banks present a small but relevant risk of burning and killing everyone on board. So yeah, you might be below the risk threshold if everyone brought two, but not three. So it's not inherently a stupid idea, but requires a really precise risk calculation to justify that figure.
That's not actually how it works though. There's a reason we restrict people to zero bombs allowed on board.
Only because bombs don’t charge as well. Aerosol cans and flammable liquids (e.g. alcohol) are allowed; in small quantities - just like power banks.
This is the first decent answer, which I appreciate. And while my comparison to a bomb may have been over the top, I don't think a comparison to shampoo is fair either. And in any case, I'm not so sure whether the limit on toiletries is all that sensical either.
> I don't think a comparison to shampoo is fair either
I’m not sure what you mean; when I Ctrl+F “shampoo”, this is the only hit I see.
There are non-rechargeable power banks too though.
Maybe it's a sort of build-quality proxy.
Someone bringing 150 "lipstick" single-cell promotional chargers -> bad
Someone bringing one phone and one laptop battery pack -> OK
If you are limited to two, you are probably not bringing anything that is near e-waste quality.
More batteries, more likely that you'll have even just one of them fail. Since even one of them (to your point) failing is enough of a reason to divert the flight, better to start by reducing the probability of that happening in ways people can swallow.
So having 500 batteries on board is okay.. but 750 is too risky? I just have a hard time believing that the math is actually mathing in this case. Maybe you're right, and this is just a first step to get people to gradually accept more restrictions.
These items are dangerous. The FAA limit for power bank capacity is 100Wh (~27000mAh), which is 360kJ of energy. A hand grenade has approximately 700-800 kJ of energy.
Two powerbanks contain the same amount of energy as a hand grenade.
That's a kind of meaningless comparison. Peanuts are about 8kJ per gram supposedly, by your measure we should ban even small amounts of peanuts on planes because 100 grams of them contain more energy than a hand grenade. Without talking about the time frame over which the energy can be released you'd have to make sure that everybody went onto the plane completely naked lest their clothes ignited.
Not good enough, body fat contains about 35kJ per gram. So nobody with over 1lb of excess body should be allowed on board. People are known to occasionally spontaneously combust.
I thought that was proven to be people falling asleep with a cigarette in their hands and lighting a blanket on fire.
Quantity is a quality of its own.
Maybe there is enough plane onboard capacity to deal with just 50 batteries, let's say; multiply the failure rate expected and the pax capacity of the plane and you get how many batteries you can afford to have onboard and still be able to deal with worst case scenario.
Way to lean into binary thinking.
Do you save your snark for batteries only, or are you equally liberally minded with your non-binary thinking about the number of bombs allowed on board?
You've now used this fallacious analogy twice.
Clearly, battery packs have more legit utility for more people at much lower risk than a bomb.
> You've now used this fallacious analogy twice.
It's not fallacious, it focuses the issue, and in this particular case shows that it's not about "binary thinking" it's about risk.
And my original puzzlement continues. At what level of risk, does limiting the number of devices on board to 500 or even more, actually accomplish anything?
If they're not all that dangerous, then why limit them at all? And if they're dangerous enough to limit at all, why in God's blue sky, would you allow that many of them on a plane?
We don't limit people to 1 knife per person, even though knives have utility to a lot of people who carry one with them every day.
> why limit them at all
Because it's a numbers game... the original order itself even acknowledges that the problem is not unique to power banks, but that what makes power banks unique is the amount of increased risk they pose compared to other devices, due to a higher ubiquity of them in general, and of low-quality unsafe ones.
If laptops were catching fire with the same frequency, they'd ban those too, but they're not. They technically can be made just as unsafe as power banks, but they usually aren't, and this directive is based on the frequency of occurrence of a particular type of device, not a general "what if" strategy.
Banning all electronic devices would be extremely unpopular and possibly tank their sales. They're trying to balance safety with convenience at a level that is acceptable to most people.
If there are 20 battery banks on board a plane, each possessed by a different person:
* Less likely to be of the same low quality
* Less likely to all go off
* Less likely that someone is doing something malicious/suspicious with it
vs. someone who has 20 power banks themselves in a bag, in which case if one of them catches fire unexpectedly, they will probably all go up at once and create a cumulative effect much more dangerous than 20 individuals.
Seems reasonable enough, though it will require a little extra work if you're the designated battery-carrier when your family flies somewhere.
Can a battery be built up the same way as DRAM? Why are we using weird chemicals?
I couldn't find the actual regulation. What counts as a "power bank"? I travel with a bunch of GoPro batteries, but they are smaller.
It's no regulation, per se. ICAO sets up rules and its up to member states to create regulation based on that.
Just give us internet free of extra charge.
Umm, did they mention the Joules (mAh) limit and combustibility?
Some airlines and/or local aviation authorities have additional restrictions. China wants CCC certified power banks, Thailand has a strict 160 Wh limit. Both are very strictly enforced.
Power banks were a mistake. It's akin to carrying fireworks in your bag. Ban them all from air travel.
Every one I have owned has been recalled for being a fire hazard. EVERY SINGLE ONE. I stopped buying them as a result. We're talking name brand devices, not junk off AliExpress.
I've never had any issues with brand name, not dollar store power banks and I've been using them for more than a decade. I'd totally expect a $5 pink power bank from a alphabet amazon seller to be an issue, but anything modern and reasonable like Anker are very unlikely to cause you any issues. Balancing, protection are very much solved issues at this point for the cell chemistries we use.
If LiPo was the issue, using LiFePo4 or LTO cells for planes would be a totally reasonable alternative too. LTO cells are so safe the manufacturer of them has videos on youtube of them hammering nails into the cells, cutting them with a saw, and crushing them with a press and they don't really care.
Not really, even Anker recalled a huge number of power banks last year: https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2025/Anker-Power-Banks-Recalled...
A company like Anker issuing a recall actually instils confidence in me, the alternative is no recall when flaws in a product are discovered.
That's a bit surprising to me, wonder what the root cause of that was. It seems to be shared across multiple products at once so maybe they had a bad batch of cells?
https://www.androidauthority.com/anker-power-bank-x-ray-scan...
You bring dollar store power banks onto airplanes?
I'm sure people do. People will buy the absolute shittiest things to save a buck. The power bank could come with a skull and crossbones painted on it, and have the product name "Deadly Explosive Power Bank" and people would still buy it if it was $10 cheaper than a reputable one.
What, you want to pay extra to get the boring battery bank?
My power banks are my power tool batteries. Charge or discharge via usb-c; drills and things use traditional rails.
It's great technology, but sadly humans are fucking morons, and dodgy manufacturers making explosive power banks has lead to the restrictions...
Although honestly how bad is it, powerbanks are very popular, I can imagine in some regions there'd be hundreds of flights taking off daily with 150+ power banks on board (the majority of passengers on a 737), and they've all landed safely.
In my city, I could scan a QR code and pay the parking meter that way. Now they've decomissioned this and you have to go to the app and select the section of the road you're parked at. Why, because scammers made scammy QR codes. Great tech, can't have them because humanity's inherent scumbaggery.
Do you remember the model names?
what about your mobile phone or laptop?
Powerbanks are simply manufactured to lower standards, by companies that have no brand accountability.
Phone batteries are typically smaller (less energy which can be violently dissipated) than most power banks.
Naturally you will ask, what about tablets and laptops? They are prohibited from checked luggage for this reason. Power banks however are smaller and easier to conceal.
The risk is really in a fire developing in your bag down below in cargo, where no one can see it. By the time the fire alarms go off, it's too late and good luck if you are over water or the Arctic. If it happens upstairs they can at least tend to it with a fire extinguisher or bag/blanket.
See ValuJet Flight 592, fire in an airplane's cargo hold is probably one of the scariest ways to slowly die.
It's all about corralling risk. You can't tell people they can't bring their laptops. But power banks are unnecessary nice-to-haves.
Laptops, at least in the US, are not banned in checked luggage[1]. The airlines may have different rules, but generally the airline is not the one inspecting your bag, TSA is.
[1] https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/whatcanibring/...
The policies are indeed confusing. FAA rules prohibit power banks and spare (uninstalled) batteries from checked baggage.
It's a bit of a grey area on jurisdiction because FAA cares about flight safety (fires) whilst TSA is primarily looking for terrorists.
United Airlines, however, prohibits laptops and tablets:
* Remove any lithium batteries from electronic devices stored in checked bags.
* If batteries cannot be removed, these devices must be stowed in cabin bags only.
* Store any spare batteries in cabin bags.
And that itself is a recent policy change from just in the last two months; as of January United's official policy [1] matched the FAA's in only requiring checked devices to be powered down
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20260129152627/https://www.unite...
There are fire extinguishers and smoke detectors in the holds of aircraft.
Halon apparently, which is ineffective against lithium battery fires.
I'd rather not test this theory because of your cavalier attitude while I'm in a chair 40,000 ft over the ocean.
Li-ion fires do not require external oxygen, the cathode decomposes to release its own oxygen gas during thermal runaway... fire extinguishers will not stop it.
Except you can't extingush a lithium cell fire because it has the oxydizer inside. Once you see one you'll understand. It's scary.
"Phones were a mistake. Every one I have owned has been recalled for being a fire hazard."