The airline rules are a bit arbitrary. They have allowances for mobility devices but don't seem to take any extra precautions for them when they have bigger batteries. There are still a lot of dangerous gaps in airline safety when it comes to lithium batteries.
[–] JoshTriplett 1 day ago
[–] traceroute66 1 day ago
I think the point is more the amount of energy stored in a fully-charged or 80% charged battery.
In that respect it doesn't matter if your 160Wh battery is from a leading manufacturer or some knock-off factory. 160Wh is 160Wh.
Also the airlines have to draw a line about what level can be permitted without specific permission, what level needs authorisation and what level needs dangerous goods handling.
So suspect the numbers feel arbitrary because its the result of various committees having consulted with various different interested parties and then having the unattractive job of needing to write some rules at the end of it.
It is an inevitable part of the process that some numbers will need to be picked which can easily be explained to passengers, and are workable for manufacturers and the airline industry.
[–] JoshTriplett 1 day ago
And yet you can carry a 100Wh spare battery and a 100Wh laptop and a 15Wh cell phone...
Ultimately, an 80Wh battery and a 160Wh battery both have more than enough energy for overheating to start a serious fire. The much more important consideration is the quality of the battery controller and the physical protections on and within the battery. And it's also important that many planes now carry burn bags that they can quickly put a runaway overheating battery (or phone or other device) into.
It would make more sense to have a battery certification and require batteries to have that certification in order to carry them on a plane.
[–] motti 1 day ago
[–] traceroute66 1 day ago
Actually not quite. The rules have tightened up significantly on powerbanks.[1]
First the same size rules apply as always, i.e. 100Wh, 100–160Wh with personal individual passenger permission and never above 160Wh.
Second, max two per passenger.
Third, you are prohibited from:
- using them to charge devices on-board
- recharging the power bank itself on-board.
They're absolutely arbitrary. From what I've seen, one of the major problems is wild variation in quality. An 80Wh battery from six-random-letters-off-Amazon is going to be more dangerous than a 160Wh battery from a reputable manufacturer.