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.
The high end vapes use huge amounts of current to the point that vape users will specifically seek unprotected cells because the protection circuitry adds a slight bit of internal resistance.
So then the unprotected cells can then short out in their bags or otherwise be damaged and fail when the vape electronics fail...
I'm generally not a proponent of draconian regulation but I firmly believe that any electronics handling substantial voltage not approved by UL or similar should be rejected at the border. It's all dangerous and incentive to manufacture it needs to be curbed.
Making fire is literally their function unlike a laptop.
Combine that with basically unregulated and semi illegal supply chain and it becomes a recipe for disaster
On the 737s there were only two plugs per 3 seats so not everyone could be plugged in.
I’m an average person and my shoulders and knees are all pushing against everything.
It's not charging a device during flight that's the issue.
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...
In China (Mainland of course), they will toss your powerbank at security if it isn't approved, and the approval they are using is rather recent and Chinese specific, thankfully most recent powerbanks made in China have the approval. They are very efficient in snuffing out powerbanks also, their thoroughness would definitely make our TSA blush.
> But the onboard outlets were good enough for anything I needed to do during the 15+ hour flight.
Only if those plugs are actually working....sigh.
Agree that China TSA equivalent > US TSA.
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.
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.
https://practical.engineering/blog/2025/4/15/when-kitty-litt...
I try not to keep any in drawers but possibly in one open place and having fire blanket close to that stand.
Fire blanket would not help much for thermal runaway but I guess it would be better than nothing for containment or at least getting that one away from all the other batteries so they don’t chain react.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
At least in that case, no corporate executives were executed (I was living in China at the time so followed the case closely):
Those Executed:
Zhang Yujun: A farmer convicted of producing and selling over 770 tons of melamine-laced "protein powder" to dairy wholesalers.
Geng Jinping: A milk collection center manager who added the toxic powder to fresh milk before selling it to major dairies like the Sanlu Group.
Corporate Executives: The highest-ranking executive involved, Tian Wenhua (former chairwoman of Sanlu Group), was sentenced to life imprisonment rather than death. Other executives received prison terms ranging from 5 to 15 years.
Other Penalties: A third man, Gao Junjie, received a suspended death sentence (which typically commutes to life in prison), and several others received life sentences or long-term imprisonment.
What about the rest of us?
That kind of fraud is oftentimes only a fine in many other nations.
that’s not fully true though, ROMOSS is the brand that sold power banks caught fire, however all of those were CCC certified.
I do tend to mostly read on planes, but e-readers are nice because you can pack fifteen books into something the size of a couple of phones, and they can be backlit so you don't have to annoy your neighbor when they're trying to sleep. Back in the day I always had the problem of putting like three library books into my backpack and more into my checked bag, but I'd still finish them all before the return trip was over and be left without anything to read. With e-readers, I can check out new books mid trip, or even at the airport.
It's made in Cyprus (EU) and has apparently received some EU funding. Using Google Search AI mode and asking what is CEO Sergey Shek connection with Moscow Radiological institute gave me following reply.
"The connection between Sergey Shek, the founder of Radiacode (formerly Radiascan), and Moscow's radiological research centers is primarily rooted in his and his team's professional and academic history. The key points of connection are:
Academic and Professional Origins: Radiacode’s founding team consists of Russian physicists and engineers who were educated and began their careers at prestigious scientific institutions in Moscow. These include researchers formerly associated with the N.N. Semenov Federal Research Center for Chemical Physics and other centers specializing in nuclear physics and spectroscopy.
Early Product Development: The company's initial products, such as the Radiascan-701, were developed in Russia using the technical expertise gained at these Moscow-based institutes. The technology behind their current high-precision scintillation detectors stems from this scientific background.
Relocation and Independence: Following the start of the conflict in Ukraine, the company officially rebranded as Radiacode and shifted its headquarters and operations to Cyprus and the United Kingdom. Sergey Shek and the company have sought to distance themselves from Russian state institutions to operate as a global, independent entity.
Russian background didn't sound good to me for obvious reasons. Thus I did not install app to my daily driver phone and use a separate Android device for this app. But the device is nice and app quite good for what I've used it.
Adding: You can find videos about the device from Youtube.com
Easier if you have a vast domestic flight market (US, China, etc), but not really practical if you're flying across borders, which is the base case in Europe, much of Asia, etc.
With traditional outlets you also inherit the whole legacy mess of competing standards for power mains. You don't want to feed 240V to a NEMA 1-15 outlet and melt someone's device mid-flight.
I do wonder if in some far future we'll just replace wall outlets with USBs for ordinary appliances, reserving traditional outlets for major power draws like stovetops, HVAC, industrial equipment etc. Maybe planes are the vanguard of this future?
E.g ANA: https://www.ana.co.jp/en/jp/guide/inflight/service/seat_plug...
Related Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EmPower_(aircraft_power_adapte...
So how do most European airlines have just that on their intercontinental flights?
I don't think I've flown intercontinental without universal power sockets (accepts EU & US plugs, sometimes others, voltage info hard to find) in the past 10 years.
In some cases it's sadly still a premium cabin thing. I refuse to fly economy at this point, premium eco tends to be good enough to get power sockets.
Almost all the international flights I've flown have had power outlets, always between 220V and 110V countries (heck, only Japan is 110V besides the US as far as I know).
I it works for China because they use (as an option at least) similar outlets to the USA (just ungrounded, pop).
I'm kind of surprised by this. I have no idea how you would do this safely at scale.
Edit: oh man I needed to scroll down, about a million people told you that hah.
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.
They sent in multiple cells for lab testing, but more importantly the second Donut demo was a motorcycle charging.
They have until Tuesday.
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)
The real production solid states are made with inorganic materials, many not in pouches nor cylinders, and has wild environmental resistance like supporting charges in -55 to +125C(-70 to +260F) which won't be possible with most water inside.
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.
A mitigation is anything that reduces the probability or the severity of a risk. There are different categories of mitigation, some of which are more robust than others. Once the risk score moves below the acceptable threshold, the risk is satisfactorily mitigated.
Example: Rapid depressurization. Without mitigation, the risk of rapid depressurization is unacceptably high. So we mitigate the probability by requiring sensitive inspections for metal fatigue, and we mitigate the severity by providing oxygen masks, a standard flight crew procedure for making an emergency descent, and regular training on that procedure. (Plus a bunch of other things I'm not thinking of off the top of my head.)
Assuming ICAO did their due diligence - and I don't have any reason to think they didn't - they would've assessed the probability and severity of all of the ways a consumer power bank might fail. That analysis is the rationale for both the number of power banks allowed on a flight and what you're allowed to do with them. And yes, they will have considered the probability of people not following the rules (which is the reason, btw, that airplane lavatories have enormous "no smoking" signs right above an ash tray).
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.
What you're saying is equivalent to claiming that this quantity is somehow independent of n.
Clearly, battery packs have more legit utility for more people at much lower risk than a bomb.
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.
I've seen many spicy pillows and even a thermal runaway or two on the flatpack batteries.
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/...
ICAO Technical Instructions (Part 8, Table 8-1 amendment):
“Spare batteries, including power banks: must not be recharged on board the aircraft; should not be used to charge portable electronic devices on board the aircraft; the number carried is limited to a maximum of two per person.”