Southwest Airways will quickly begin capping what number of moveable chargers and energy banks you possibly can convey on a flight, in response to an inner message obtained by the New York Times.
In keeping with the report, beginning April twentieth, passengers will solely have the ability to convey one lithium battery-powered moveable charger per particular person to a flight, and so they received’t be allowed to cost these moveable chargers utilizing in-seat energy, nor will they have the ability to retailer them within the overhead bins. As an alternative, passengers will probably be requested to carry their moveable chargers all through the flight or retailer them in a carry-on bag underneath their seats.
Lithium batteries energy a lot of the expertise we use in our day-to-day lives, from telephones to laptops to e-cigarettes. They’re additionally present in moveable chargers and energy banks.
More often than not, they work nice, but when they’re broken, overcharged, or overheated, then the batteries can catch hearth. As a result of chemical compounds inside these batteries, the flames they’ll create might be very tough to extinguish.
Resulting from this threat, moveable chargers have been lengthy banned from checked baggage, with airways requiring passengers to place moveable chargers and every other lithium battery-powered gadgets inside their carry-on luggage as an alternative.
However nonetheless, there have been 97 lithium battery-related incidents in aviation in 2025, and there have already been 14 accidents this yr, in response to the Federal Aviation Administration. Nearly all of the lithium battery-related air incidents that concerned smoke, hearth or excessive warmth stemmed from moveable chargers. The second largest offender was e-cigarettes, in response to the FAA information.
Essentially the most high-profile latest incident was in January 2025, when an Airbus aircraft went up in flames on the tarmac at an airport in Busan, South Korea. Everybody on board needed to evacuate, and the hearth took roughly an hour to extinguish. Authorities later concluded that a power bank saved in an overhead bin could have been the offender. A couple of months later, an Air China flight needed to make an emergency touchdown when a lithium battery in an overhead bin spontaneously combusted mid-flight.
Chinese language regulators have banned moveable batteries from flights altogether, besides if the gadget is clearly marked with a Chinese language security certification and has not been topic to remembers. Many airways internationally have additionally since banned passengers from utilizing or charging moveable chargers, however Southwest is to date the one main American airline to come back out with an excellent stricter algorithm for moveable chargers.
A technique which you can shield your self towards these spontaneous fires is to maintain a detailed eye on product remembers. Anker, one of many world’s main energy financial institution makers, has issued a number of remembers over the previous yr because of potential hearth dangers.
