I've had portable charging battery packs for at least a decade. I wasn't special. They were common. But it's only in the last few years that I've been hearing any concern about the batteries in consumer electronic devices causing aircraft fires.
I remember hearing about the ones in hoverboards, and then there was one version of a Samsung device that had problems, but nobody generalized to "all such electronic items must be in the cabin with you, and if you lose track of yours, we're turning the plane around."
Did something maybe change about battery chemistry that I don't know about? Or did the design change, such that the batteries aren't protected anymore or have enough more capacity that they've become dangerous?
I can't imagine there were actually widespread battery fires for as long as I remember never having heard not to put a battery in checked luggage, so what else changed such that this is such a major issue now when it wasn't before?
The other thing is that consumers won’t be aware of risks for semi-disposable batteries. I found out a few days ago that a high capacity Anker battery that I own was recalled last year. Would such a thing even happen for a random battery sold at CVS?
I was in a leadership role for an org with about 95k laptops. We had, on average 4-6 significant battery incidents with an ignition per year. Anywhere from 30-250 reported battery swelling events annually. It’s enough that we provided kits for safe storage of at risk batteries to every field office.
Now that’s a pretty low risk of an incident, but in an airline environment the impact of that risk is very high.
For laptops the target was 4 year replacement for most and 2 year for high performance. IIRC, there was a Dell model where the swelling and battery shape was such that the device was super wobbly and damaged that spiked the numbers. Most devices would just get tagged as a bad battery and repaired or replaced.
If I was still there or in that role, I’d collect more battery data in general, as it’s both an employee safety and perhaps a quantitative difference that can be leveraged in purchasing.
I guarantee there is. Device quits working, user doesn't know why, they discard it.
My only swelling incident so far was on a makeup mirror my wife owns. The battery is in a compartment whose door popped off due to the swelling. She asked me only when she couldn't get it to latch again. I looked at it and immediately told her not to plug it in.
Despite the fact that this thing cost hundreds of dollars, and they do sell some spare parts, the battery isn't one - and the battery leads are soldered directly to the circuit board. After some hunting around for a compatible battery (size was a major restriction), I bought it (~$15), cut the connector off, and soldered it to the board.
I tried emailing customer service; never got a reply.
Yeah, you know if a work laptop catches fire in someone's house, especially if there's appreciable damage much less worse, there's not only your concern for your employee's well-being but serious lawyers are going to get involved and your company is probably going to write a pretty large check to make it all go away.
Not lithium battery related but I recently had a built-in microwave control panel (apparently) decide to self-immolate at 4am. The fire department responded and I'm fine and the direct fire damage is relatively limited but smoke throughout house. The interior is emptied out, the interior is being redone to a significant degree, and this will be basically months of work and lots of money even given insurance. Wouldn't do wonders for my productivity over the rest of the year if I were still working full-time either.
Living out of hotel. Can't imagine the situation with young children and someone who can't write large checks even if they're partially reimbursed.
What I did is not buy another microwave.
I'm getting countertop Panasonic 4-in-1. I'm getting rid of double ovens (the second of which I basically never used) in favor of a range, which will be induction in place than my prior propane cooktop.
I know I have some truly ancient stuff up in the attic for basically nostalgia and I should just recycle.
Maybe not conventional batteries, but you've been disallowed from putting lithium batteries in checked luggage for at least 16 years. I remember being dragged into the bowels of an airport by security to open my checked bag because I'd forgotten a device in it. That was in 2009.
When you check in bags they ask you to make sure there aren't any rechargeable devices or battery packs in them and this has also been going on for a long time.
This rule only applies to loose (spare) Li-ion batteries, not batteries which are installed in a device.
Batteries over 160 Wh (in some cases, 100 Wh) are banned whether they’re in a device or not, but that’s far bigger than any phone battery: an iPhone 16 Pro Max battery is about 16 Wh, and typical laptop batteries are around 60 Wh.
IATA Li-ion battery fact sheet: https://www.iata.org/en/iata-repository/pressroom/fact-sheet...
I've heard of people ordering 18650s online and getting them along with a free flashlight in which they came; I wonder if this regulation is why.
The battery limit described is for individual passengers, not air freight.
Slightly off topic, but she does an amazing job.
Green Dot Aviation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7uw6VzWHcM
Mentour Pilot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y50saxfTqQA
One time I had an old phone with battery removed in checked luggage and when I arrived at my destination, I saw they fiddled with the tsa lock and the phone was taken out of the envelope I had it in and just lying on top of my clothes. I mean maybe they saw it in an xray and wanted to steal it and then saw it was some old junk phone, no idea how good the xrays come out to tell beforehand whether you're dealing with an iPhone or 7 year old android midrange...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(energy)
EDIT: doh, just realised you were comparing with other forms of damage. That said, I think its truly amazing that a snack has the same energy as a nasty car crash. Mind blown.
The average failure state of a battery is not similar to detonating a handful of TNT on an airplane, which is a more instantaneous explosion. Sure, some battery failure states are violent and would unquestionably be a cause for an airplane to call a mayday and land, but something like puncturing a soft-cell battery is still a slower release than TNT.
We should just expect people to get better at understanding useful units — I'd prefer someone learns Wh since it is indeed a useful metric—kWh is the usual major unit of energy at home, and Wh is just smaller than that.
Enough energy to heat 1 kg of water by 86°C (or 86 kg of water by 1°C).
And people dont travel with single device anymore. My usually setup has 72wh powerbank, ~20wh phone and 90wh laptop, and various smaller gadget. They are reaching nearly 200wh
AirTags contain lithium primary batteries, which are a totally different thing (other than both containing the element lithium).
Lithium primary batteries present no more a risk than alkaline AAs. Probably less.
Lithium poses two risks:
1) The internal resistance is low enough that if it's shorted it can go into thermal runaway. This is the risk they had in mind when saying no loose cells (but note that cells merely need to be securely contained, not specifically in a device.)
2) Secondary cells can grow whiskers inside the cell. If a whisker grows just wrong it can short the cell from inside and drive it into runaway. This is the risk that they are worried about here--and it's a legitimate risk, it's brought a plane down.
The reason the rules are different in the passenger compartment is that while there's nothing on board an airplane that can fight a lithium fire it's generally a small, weak fire (the big e-bike batteries that have been in some rather dramatic videos aren't allowed) that humans can generally keep from turning into a big fire. But if nobody can fight the fire you have a big problem. Hence why lost phones are treated very differently--they could have fallen someplace where the fire wouldn't be fought.
How does that tell you that they are dangerous? The danger with rechargeable Lithium batteries isn't that they contact water and begin to burn.
[0] https://www.faa.gov/hazmat/packsafe/lithium-batteries
[1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/10/lufthansa-awkwardly-...
It’s like airplane mode. How many cellphones on a given flight are actually in airplane mode?
Airplane mode is largely pseudoscience/an abundance of caution/solving a different problem than a safety one. There's approximately zero chance of a phone interfering with avionics, especially modern ones, with their very low transmission power.
Supposedly the real reason has always been that mobile network operators don't like the interference high-altitude phones can cause: They're in view of potentially many base stations, some of which might be using the same frequency (which is possible since far-away regular-altitude phones are below the radio horizon and therefore not an issue).
Some evidence for this theory: The "mobile phone ban" is an FCC regulation, not an FAA one, and many (non-US) airlines have been offering on-board microcells for decades without any issues.
I do agree that interference is quite relevant. The general rule of radio is that you play nice, especially when on a licensed frequency (the cell companies have the licenses for those bands, the users do not), and a phone up high over multiple cell towers is most certainly not playing nice.
That's the steelman version of the parent poster's question.
An uninstalled battery will have its terminals exposed, where they could be accidentally shorted by a stray paperclip, foil wrapper, or zip.
I'm not saying that current regulations of lithium batteries make sense; my argument is that the actual threat from lithium batteries seems larger than that of devices not in airplane mode (i.e. somewhere around zero).
Not in the US, where it applies throughout the flight.
And at least in Europe, the ban is due to the risk of distraction/disorientation in case of an emergency, in my experience.
> the plane is essentially a Faraday cage at altitude, and a phone has almost zero chance of connecting to a tower
Counterpoint: I have a whole collection of “welcome to <place>, your roaming charges will be <exorbitant>” text messages on my phone from countries I’ve only ever overflown at 30k feet.
This is from flights that do permit in-flight phone usage, but I believe my network has no roaming agreement with the microcell operator, so it keeps scanning and sometimes catches a bidirectional link to some long-range tower. (They’re specifically optimized for that in the North Sea and Atlantic for fishing boats, as far as I know, so for regular modern towers it’s probably less likely, but that separation hasn’t always existed.)
[0] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6839167/MH370-pilot...
Loose/spare Li-ion batteries that are not installed in a device, and large batteries over 100-160 Wh are banned in checked luggage.
"Devices containing lithium metal or lithium ion batteries should be carried in carry-on baggage. Most other consumer electronic devices containing batteries are allowed in carry-on and checked baggage."
Taken literally, this is of course widely ignored. There are also various requirements around spare batteries that do include capacity limits.
Literally never once have I been asked that and I flew internationally 6 times a year for more than 5 years.
The only thing I can think of is maybe you look like the kind of person that would have rechargeable devices and battery packs in his luggage? :)
This definitely happens stateside. Usually during check-in
People who don't care are the reason I don't fly anymore.
I'm sure you didn't actually mean it that way though :-)
A sibling comment made me recheck the rules and it does seem like phones and other small rechargeable devices are allowed in checked baggage.
Maybe I've been unconsciously extending "power banks and rechargeable batteries" to also mean device when questioned.
Except that one time in Latin America where they would only let me put my ultra-compact camera in checked baggage if I took out the batteries.
November 5, 2024
> WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England.
> Poland said last month that it has arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and is searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene said Tuesday there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration.
People have been sending explodey batteries by air freight. In that context, requiring batteries on a plane to be in the cabin where they can be located, accompanied by the owner of the battery could be a good deterrent.
> Lithium cells or batteries power many consumer electronic devices and medical devices, like watches, laptop batteries, calculators, cell phones, hearing aids and much more. You can bring lithium-battery powered devices as carry-on items or in checked baggage. Spare lithium batteries are allowed as carry-on items only with batteries individually protected to prevent short circuit.
FAA general rules are similar. The concern nowadays is that someone will drop a device into a seat mechanism and it could crush the battery.
I took a few flights in the last year or two and they made an announcement along the lines of "If you happen to drop your phone between your seat, do not try to retrieve it. Call a flight attendant for help." Latest flights didn't make the same statement, but wasn't necessarily listening for it.
This was pretty much the initiating incident, 15 years ago now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UPS_Airlines_Flight_6
The other thing that was mentioned was that devices got thinner so there's a bit more chance of bending, squashing etc. stressing or puncturing the battery which can cause a fire.
And thirdly I think is cheap devices that don't have adequate protection against thermal issues etc., but that's mostly a risk during charging (that's where those hoverboard fire stories came from).
The best GTA mod: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IVk8PsSgEI
I don't think there's been any single notable change, but energy density is steadily increasing.
But I have thrown away probably 100 18650 and 26650 batteries that just sucked or were fire hazards.
incidents with lithium batteries on US aircraft now happen about twice a week
there has been slowly ramping up concern about lithium batteries over the last several years as a result
You can click through to see specific incident summaries. It looks like a significant amount (if not majority) of events are inflight on passenger flights (as opposed to on the ground, tarmac, ground handling, or freight operations). There were 85 total incidents in 2024 (there were some 9 million passenger revenue departures to give another sense of scale).
Lost phone is a problem because:
* Could be in a place that increases risk of thermal run away to begin with - classic example would be caught in the seat hinge. But even being stuck surrounding by cushioning could increase the risk of overheating
* Decreased visibility. The faster you can react (ie, try to dump the thing into a thermal protection bag / get it away from other flammables) the better. If you read the incidents, you'll see time after time the sequence "passenger notified flight attendant, who then placed it in a thermal containment bag, flight completed normally".
I could see changes to rules that will begin to prohibit storing batteries in overhead compartments (which aside from the pinch problem, actually has all the same risks of losing a phone). Or perhaps mandatory/routine pre-emptive use of thermal containment bags.
The airliners know there's no going back. They must accommodate for batteries, so they'll seek the right balance.
For example, with DeWalt 20V batteries, 160Wh is an 8Ah (which is one of the larger sized batteries), but if you have 60V FlexVolt tools (circular saw) you are probably out of luck as they start around 6Ah (and @60V, 160Wh is only 2.6Ah), going up to 15Ah (which would be 900Wh).
Correct. So long as it's for personal use.
> [1] Quantity limits: None for most batteries — but batteries must be for use by the passenger. Batteries carried for further sale or distribution (vendor samples, etc.) are prohibited. There is a limit of two spare batteries per person for the larger lithium ion batteries described above (101–160 watt hours per battery).
https://www.lufthansa.com/us/en/prepare-for-your-trip/baggag...
Although 20 loose batteries is still plenty. The real challenge is the 15 devices per person limit
Do AirPods count as 3 devices because charging case + 2 ear pieces?
As a private person, international transport of devices with batteries is a pain.
Aviate, Navigate, Communicate
It's hard for me to imagine how the urgent aviation and navigation involved in turning the plane around takes two people 15 uninterrupted minutes, let alone the portion after turning around needing 15 uninterrupted minutes.
Arranging a reroute with ATC, explaining everything, adjusting the autopilot for the new route etc. Assessment time on what to do. Those in the back don’t need to know anything until those decisions are made and executed. It’s not like there’s a negotiation to be had!
Did my comment give you the impression I didn't understand that? But I don't think it's enough of an explanation.
> Arranging a reroute with ATC, explaining everything, adjusting the autopilot for the new route etc. Assessment time on what to do. Those in the back don’t need to know anything until those decisions are made and executed. It’s not like there’s a negotiation to be had!
Do you think they turned around before most of those things?
Do you think there were no gaps where they could have communicated?
I wonder if they actually were following "Aviate, Navigate." end of checklist.
“Communicate” means communication with air traffic control
They did that.
Communication with the passengers is good, of course, but optional, if they have time
I'm not a pilot, so i have no idea. But from watching vasaviation on youtube, it always seems to take like 5-10 minutes between when they first radio the control tower there is an emergency, then they go through their checklists and stabilize things, and then they're ready to talk to the tower for the next step. Now add more back and forth and the time to actually fly to get back to a regular path, and 15 minutes might even seem too short a period of time before you've finished resolving everything and can now kick back and tell the passengers the end result.
Pilots have a TON of checklists and procedures. If they're up in the air approaching cruising altitude and need to turn around (even in an emergency), it's a lot of work.
They need to assess the situation, inform ATC that they are returning, copy down heading information from ATC (they generally do not just 'start turning'), start working through checklists, start dumping fuel (planes are often too heavy to land well early on in a flight), get the approach and landing procedures for the airport they are returning to, keep talking to ATC and switch from regional/approach frequencies, all while adjusting settings and doing calculations. In an emergency, they also need to report on how many people are on board, fuel levels, what their plan is, etc... all while, you know, flying the plane and being extra alert for other traffic (both in sight, on instruments, and the other radio calls) since they are deviating from what's expected.
Plus, they often have no idea what's going on, they have only heard "there is a fire onboard, we think we have it under control" from the crew.
They need to find, read, understand and brief the approach charts, missed approach procedures, etc., configure that all in the onboard computer, go over a stack of checklists, etc.
There’s nothing you can do other than stay in your seat and keep out of the way.
Because as soon as you mention "fire" you'll get a bunch of dumb fucks panicking themselves so hard they're going to behave completely irrationally (like attempting to rip open the emergency doors which IS possible at low enough altitudes) - or manage to induce legitimate medical problems. Heart attack for the older folks, dyspnea up to actually going unconscious from hyperventilation for the younger folks.
The Denver airport fire this month was an object lesson. A panicking mob apparently ignored instructions and went out the wrong emergency exit door, onto the airplane wing, where they stood over the flaming jet-fuel smoke with no way down.
(The other doors had slides).
And yes this shit has happened in the past. Panicked people are uncontrollable and in a critical situation, priority #1 is to avoid panic to rise at all costs because panicked people can turn a critical situation into outright disaster.
Crowds can do dumb shit in a self reinforcing loop.
Battery fires will also produce other bad stuff in the air, but it's still a minor consideration compared to a fire which can bring down the plane.
I've never been to the US but seen a lot of random videos and pilots in the US sound kind of unprofessional. They don't seem to communicate clearly and use very casual language. For instance I saw a video recently where the pilot refused a plane because he "wasn't feeling it" or something.
But a fire on a plane is pretty much the most dangerous event you can have on a flight. Especially lithium battery fires since aircraft don't have the right extinguisher for them, and staff are generally trained to quarantine the fire just long enough so it can be taken care of on the ground.
Do we know where the device was found?
- No need to print/distribute physical tickets
- Check-ins via the app reduces the need for ground personnel
- They can push inflight menus, shopping items, promotions etc.
- Flight updates and other notifications can get pushed to your device
- Integration of loyalty systems like airmiles
- They get to track various user behaviors
E-tickets were introduced in the 1990s, and essentially all airlines were using them by 2008. They don't have anything to do with phones. Mobile boarding passes are a more recent development.
You want the crew to be fully in charge of security. If they think the plane should turn around, it turns around. In the long term it is way cheaper to eat those costs then to start a whole industry about litigation for events like these, probably causing everyone to buy additional insurance etc.
You definitely don't want to give any incentive to anyone to "overlook" possible problems.
Once amortized against successful journeys the overall cost per passenger isn't significant. When it is, that's when we start seeing liability moved to the instigator.
I hike, a phone falling is a realistic issue. I use a lanyard around my neck, though, not to my belt. A lanyard long enough to reach from your belt to use is likely to let it hit the ground. I've had it slip out a few times and be caught by the lanyard--without hitting the ground.
>With your Apple Watch, in the Find My app, or on the web at iCloud.com/find, you can play a sound to help find your device if it's nearby or find it on a map.
I'd never be caught dead with that lanyard haha so it's amusing to see it recommended, though I don't blame others for using one!
I've not considered it, but with the rise of phones and e-ink and so on, I assume pocket protectors are even less common than they were prior?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Tullock#Tullock's_spike
Each phone gets a 9h glass screen protector and thin TPU case, each about $10 on Amazon. I crack the screen protector maybe once every 8 months and there is usually three screen protectors in the pack I bought, so I just replace the cheap screen protector.
When I drop the phone, I try to soften the impact with my shoe.
One thing I do appreciate about Apple is their new ceramic shield material on the 6.1-inch screen. It actually does appear to be more scratch-resistant than other smartphones. Working our way up through the Mohs scale of hardness, usually I can feel the level-6 pick grab the glass and start scratching, but with this latest generation of ceramic shield, it still feels pretty smooth—even with that sharp level-6 pick. The marks are still appearing, but they're so faint and subtle that I almost can't say "scratches at a level-6, with deeper grooves at a level-7" anymore. Almost.
You can get more scratch-resistant screen protectors, but as far as the builtin glass I don't think Apple is falling behind anywhere.
The 15 is pristine. And I treat it worse! I typically carry iPhones naked and the only mishap was I dropped two iPhone 6 because that thing was like a stick of butter.
Being too hard should make it easier to shatter but harder to scratch, shouldn't it?
I realize this was an Air France flight, but I suspect the checked rules are nearly the same.
If this keeps happening, providing an on-board toolkit and cross-training flight attendants in proper seat disassembly and reassembly could well pay off.
The risks seem to be lower than the ones associated with landing with a device stuck somewhere.
What I don't understand is why they don't construct the seats for less chances of things getting lost in them. Some seats have huge holes to lose things in…
(Business class seats can adjust themselves with a person sitting in them, quite sure that's enough force to 'fold' a phone)
In this case, if the legal department paints pictures of doom, and the ops department paints pictures of cost savings, it's up in the air (pun intended) which management will pick.
A competent legal department will provide a realistic assessment of risk to go into this decision making process, not just obstruct everything.