[HN Gopher] ICAO issued new power bank restriction on flight
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ICAO issued new power bank restriction on flight
Author : phantomathkg
Score : 49 points
Date : 2026-03-28 14:30 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.icao.int)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.icao.int)
| Liftyee wrote:
| 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.
| tristanj wrote:
| 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
| ranger_danger wrote:
| 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.
| Blackthorn wrote:
| Have you seen what passes for quality on the random power
| banks sold by Amazon?
| markdown wrote:
| Random power banks are about the same quality as random USB
| drives.
| sofixa wrote:
| > 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.
| fmajid wrote:
| One deterrent is, in China corporate criminals are executed,
| like those who put melamine in infant formula.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| 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.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| The Chinese fly internationally too. So there's some
| motivation to not have these in other countries.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| 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.)
| hdgvhicv wrote:
| Maybe we should get our governments to execute corporate
| criminals?
| capnrefsmmat wrote:
| 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.
| trebligdivad wrote:
| 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?)
| dbcurtis wrote:
| 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.
| zarzavat wrote:
| 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.
| nharada wrote:
| Was expecting to be annoyed but this seems reasonable. You can
| have 2 power banks and can't charge them during flight
| quantummagic wrote:
| 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?
| ddalex wrote:
| 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.
| bryant wrote:
| 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.
| quantummagic wrote:
| 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.
| nharada wrote:
| > 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"
| quantummagic wrote:
| That's not actually how it works though. There's a reason we
| restrict people to zero bombs allowed on board.
| thih9 wrote:
| 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.
| quantummagic wrote:
| 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.
| thih9 wrote:
| > 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.
| majorchord wrote:
| There are non-rechargeable power banks too though.
| SilasX wrote:
| 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.
| avidiax wrote:
| 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.
| hollerith wrote:
| Way to lean into binary thinking.
| quantummagic wrote:
| 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?
| unethical_ban wrote:
| 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.
| quantummagic wrote:
| > 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.
| majorchord wrote:
| > 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.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| 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.
| tristanj wrote:
| 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.
| drum55 wrote:
| 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.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| 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.
| fragmede wrote:
| I thought that was proven to be people falling asleep
| with a cigarette in their hands and lighting a blanket on
| fire.
| amelius wrote:
| Just give us internet free of extra charge.
| longislandguido wrote:
| 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.
| miyuru wrote:
| what about your mobile phone or laptop?
| longislandguido wrote:
| 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.
| drum55 wrote:
| There are fire extinguishers and smoke detectors in the
| holds of aircraft.
| majorchord wrote:
| 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.
| petre wrote:
| 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.
| longislandguido wrote:
| 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.
| NocturnalWaffle wrote:
| 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/...
| longislandguido wrote:
| 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.
| thih9 wrote:
| Do you remember the model names?
| drum55 wrote:
| 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.
| derekerdmann wrote:
| Not really, even Anker recalled a huge number of power banks
| last year: https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2025/Anker-Power-
| Banks-Recalled...
| drum55 wrote:
| 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?
| vdqtp3 wrote:
| https://www.androidauthority.com/anker-power-bank-x-ray-
| scan...
| longislandguido wrote:
| You bring dollar store power banks onto airplanes?
| ryandrake wrote:
| 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.
| fragmede wrote:
| What, you want to pay extra to get the _boring_ battery
| bank?
| majorchord wrote:
| "Phones were a mistake. Every one I have owned has been
| recalled for being a fire hazard."
| netsharc wrote:
| 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.
| toast0 wrote:
| My power banks are my power tool batteries. Charge or discharge
| via usb-c; drills and things use traditional rails.
| snops wrote:
| 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...
| OptionOfT wrote:
| 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.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| 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.
| aitchnyu wrote:
| Umm, did they mention the Joules (mAh) limit and combustibility?
| physhster wrote:
| 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.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Seems reasonable enough, though it will require a little extra
| work if you're the designated battery-carrier when your family
| flies somewhere.
| perching_aix wrote:
| 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.
| Animats wrote:
| 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.
| mhjkl wrote:
| 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
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