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.
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.
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.
> 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?)
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Busan_Flight_391
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.
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.
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.
What about the rest of us?
That kind of fraud is oftentimes only a fine in many other nations.
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.)
The only question is if the rules will mind the difference in battery composition and chemistry.
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.
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"
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.
I’m not sure what you mean; when I Ctrl+F “shampoo”, this is the only hit I see.
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.
Two powerbanks contain the same amount of energy as a hand grenade.
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.
Clearly, battery packs have more legit utility for more people at much lower risk than a bomb.
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.
* 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
[1] https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/whatcanibring/...
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.
I'd rather not test this theory because of your cavalier attitude while I'm in a chair 40,000 ft over the ocean.