• Southwest Airlines Needs Your Eyes-On When Charging From a Power Bank

Southwest Airlines announced it would no longer allow passengers to use portable chargers and power banks inside of baggage, requiring them to be done in a way passengers can monitor them.

The rule is downstream of some happenings at home and abroad: Lithium-ion battery fires are increasing in frequency around the world, with 22 such instances this year, and 89 throughout 2024. Shoddy construction, haywire electronics, and a potent fire source are a bad combination in the flight levels, after all. A fire in January is suspected to have been caused by a power bank with deteriorated insulation, forcing South Korean carrier Air Busan to de-plane 176 passengers.

That fire was enough to push some Asian airlines to institute the no-blind-charging rule, which could easily catch on throughout the USA as carriers realize the breadth of the issue. A notable tech brand of generally respectable quality recently announced the recall of a whopping 1.1 million power banks due to fire concerns, putting customers through the rigamarole of disposing of their affected PowerCore 10000 power banks via proper channels in order to get a safer replacement.

The recall affects a strong seller online, popular for its portable build, affordable price tag, and name brand. More than a million were sold from June 2016 to December 2022, and have been cited as a fire or explosion hazard in 19 incidents so far. Two of those were mild burns, while 11 of them resulted in property damage totaling more than $60,000.

So it's understandable that Southwest wants passengers to use their portable charging gear where it can be readily monitored for fire hazards. Charging cannot be done in the overhead baggage bin, most particularly, and the power bank being used must be visible when in use. Pax can carry up to "20 spare batteries at a time" as long as they are less than 100 watt-hours, and have protected terminals via case or design.

FMI: www.southwest.com, www.cpsc.gov