UK Pilots Want Lithium Battery Powered Devices In the Cabin

AmiMoJo writes: The professional association and trade union of UK pilots The British Airline Pilots Association (BALPA), has asked airlines to require travelers to carry devices that run on lithium-based batteries with them in the passenger cabin instead of in checked luggage. The union hoping to address what it considers a significant potential safety risk, baggage fires going unnoticed in the hold. BALPA explains, "when they short circuit, [they] have a tendency to burst into high intensity fires, which are difficult to extinguish." They further point out, "lithium battery fires have caused at least three cargo aircraft crashes and the UN safety regulator has banned a specific type of lithium battery (lithium metal) from being carried as cargo on passenger aircraft."

Comments

Please sir can I have more mass!

[ramriot]

This is a laudable suggestion with three small caveats, assuming you don't ban our iPhones, laptops all together :-

1/ If we are required to carry these batteries in the cabin then a mass dispensation needs to be made to accommodate them and what they are powering if non-removeable (I've had situations in the past where I needed to check my laptop power supply and batteries to get under the cabin Mass allocation)

2/ TSA etc cannot require that devices be activatable to be carried as a dead battery would mean nowhere else to carry them. (To be honest I nere understood this rule as all previous instances of 'converted' electronic devices used on planes would have passed this test but not the chemical sniffers.)

3/ If they do catch fire in the cabin, what you gonna do in the short period of time before toxic fumes start killing passengers. My suggestion, get an empty food trolley and keep duct-tape on hand.