Passengers on Southwest Airways flights will quickly be required to maintain their transportable chargers in plain sight whereas utilizing them due to considerations concerning the rising variety of lithium battery fires in a brand new coverage that different airways could undertake.
Southwest introduced the brand new coverage that can go into impact Could 28 and mentioned passengers could have already seen notifications concerning the rule when utilizing the airline’s app. Whereas Southwest is the primary U.S. airline to limit using transportable chargers, a number of Asian airways have taken motion earlier this yr after a devastating fireplace aboard an Air Busan aircraft ready to take off from an airport in South Korea in January.
There’s rising concern about lithium-ion battery fires on planes as a result of the variety of incidents continues to develop yearly, and units powered by these batteries are ubiquitous. There have already been 19 incidents involving these batteries this yr, following final yr’s report excessive of 89, in line with Federal Aviation Administration statistics.
The incidents have greater than doubled because the pandemic-era low of 39 in 2020, and have climbed yearly.
In comparison with the roughly 180,000 flights U.S. airways function every week, the variety of incidents continues to be comparatively small and lithium batteries can overheat wherever. Nevertheless, this can be a rising concern for the airways.
Within the Korean airline fireplace in January, all 176 individuals aboard the aircraft needed to be evacuated as a result of the blaze burned by the aircraft’s roof. The reason for that fireplace hasn’t been formally decided, however a number of airways and Korean regulators took motion towards transportable chargers afterward.
Korean airways received’t permit the chargers to be saved in overhead bins anymore; they have to both be packed in a plastic bag or have their ports coated with insulating tape to maintain them from touching metallic.
As well as, Singapore Airways and Thai Airways each prohibit the use or charging of transportable energy banks in any respect throughout flights.
Final summer season, a smoking laptop computer in a passenger’s bag led to the evacuation of a aircraft awaiting takeoff at San Francisco Worldwide Airport. In 2023, a flight from Dallas to Orlando, Florida, made an emergency touchdown in Jacksonville, Florida, after a battery caught fireplace in an overhead bin.
Southwest mentioned that requiring these chargers to be saved out within the open when they’re getting used will assist as a result of “within the uncommon occasion a lithium battery overheats or catches fireplace, fast entry is essential and holding energy banks in plain sight permit for quicker intervention and helps defend everybody onboard.”
The airline will permit the chargers to be saved inside carry-on luggage once they aren’t in use.
The Transportation Safety Administration has lengthy prohibited e-cigarettes and chargers and energy banks with lithium-ion batteries in checked luggage, however permits them in carry-on luggage. The rule exists exactly as a result of fires within the cargo maintain is likely to be tougher to detect and extinguish.
The FAA recommends passengers preserve cell telephones and different units close by on planes to allow them to entry them rapidly. The company mentioned flight crews are educated to acknowledge and reply to lithium battery fires. Passengers ought to notify the flight crew instantly if their lithium battery or system is overheating, increasing, smoking or burning.
A earlier report launched final yr by UL Requirements & Engagement mentioned e-cigarettes overheated extra typically than every other system. Multiple-quarter of passengers surveyed for that research mentioned they put vaping cigarettes and transportable chargers in checked luggage. That’s towards federal guidelines.
UL Requirements & Engagement, a part of a safety-science firm as soon as generally known as Underwriters Laboratories, mentioned it based mostly its findings on information from 35 passenger and cargo airways, together with 9 of the ten main U.S. passenger carriers.
This story was initially featured on Fortune.com
