Southwest Is About to Restrict Energy Banks on Flights

Southwest Airways will quickly begin capping what number of transportable chargers and energy banks you may carry on a flight, in accordance with an inside message obtained by the New York Times.

In accordance with the report, beginning April twentieth, passengers will solely be capable to carry one lithium battery-powered transportable charger per particular person to a flight, they usually received’t be allowed to cost these transportable chargers utilizing in-seat energy, nor will they be capable to retailer them within the overhead bins. As a substitute, passengers shall be requested to carry their transportable chargers all through the flight or retailer them in a carry-on bag below their seats.

Lithium batteries energy a lot of the know-how we use in our day-to-day lives, from telephones to laptops to e-cigarettes. They’re additionally present in transportable chargers and energy banks.

More often than not, they work superb, 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, transportable chargers had been lengthy banned from checked baggage, with airways requiring passengers to place transportable chargers and another lithium battery-powered units inside their carry-on baggage 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 12 months, in accordance with the Federal Aviation Administration. Nearly all of the lithium battery-related air incidents that concerned smoke, hearth or excessive warmth stemmed from transportable chargers. The second greatest wrongdoer was e-cigarettes, in accordance with 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 fireplace took roughly an hour to extinguish. Authorities later concluded that a power bank saved in an overhead bin could have been the wrongdoer. 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 transportable batteries from flights altogether, besides if the system 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 transportable chargers, however Southwest is up to now the one main American airline to come back out with an excellent stricter algorithm for transportable chargers.

A method you could defend 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 12 months resulting from potential hearth dangers.