Passengers on Southwest Airways flights will quickly be required to maintain their transportable chargers in plain sight whereas utilizing them due to issues 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 the usage of transportable chargers, a number of Asian airways have taken motion earlier this 12 months after a devastating hearth aboard an Air Busan airplane 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 gadgets powered by these batteries are ubiquitous. There have already been 19 incidents involving these batteries this 12 months, following final 12 months’s document excessive of 89, in accordance with Federal Aviation Administration statistics.
The incidents have greater than doubled for the reason that 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 remains to be comparatively small and lithium batteries can overheat anyplace. Nevertheless, it is a rising concern for the airways.
Within the Korean airline hearth in January, all 176 folks aboard the airplane needed to be evacuated as a result of the blaze burned by the airplane’s roof. The reason for that fireside hasn’t been formally decided, however a number of airways and Korean regulators took motion in opposition to transportable chargers afterward.
Korean airways gained’t enable the chargers to be saved in overhead bins anymore; they need 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 time, a smoking laptop computer in a passenger’s bag led to the evacuation of a airplane 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 hearth in an overhead bin.
Southwest mentioned that requiring these chargers to be stored out within the open when they’re getting used will assist as a result of “in the rare event a lithium battery overheats or catches fire, quick access is critical and keeping power banks in plain sight allow for faster intervention and helps protect everyone onboard.”
The airline will enable the chargers to be saved inside carry-on baggage after 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 baggage, however permits them in carry-on baggage. The rule exists exactly as a result of fires within the cargo maintain may be more durable to detect and extinguish.
The FAA recommends passengers maintain cell telephones and different gadgets close by on planes to allow them to entry them shortly. The company mentioned flight crews are skilled to acknowledge and reply to lithium battery fires. Passengers ought to notify the flight crew instantly if their lithium battery or machine is overheating, increasing, smoking or burning.
A earlier report launched final 12 months by UL Requirements & Engagement mentioned e-cigarettes overheated extra usually than another machine. Multiple-quarter of passengers surveyed for that research mentioned they put vaping cigarettes and transportable chargers in checked baggage. That’s in opposition to federal guidelines.
UL Requirements & Engagement, a part of a safety-science firm as soon as often known as Underwriters Laboratories, mentioned it primarily based 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
