Southwest Is About to Restrict Energy Banks on Flights

Southwest Airlines will quickly begin capping what number of transportable chargers and energy banks you’ll be able to carry on a flight, in response to an inside message obtained by the New York Times.

According to the report, beginning April twentieth, passengers will solely have the ability to carry one lithium battery-powered transportable charger per particular person to a flight, they usually gained’t be allowed to cost these transportable chargers utilizing in-seat energy, nor will they have the ability to retailer them within the overhead bins. Instead, passengers will probably be requested to carry their transportable chargers all through the flight or retailer them in a carry-on bag beneath 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 are additionally present in transportable chargers and energy banks.

Most of the time, they work superb, but when they’re broken, overcharged, or overheated, then the batteries can catch hearth. Due to the chemical compounds inside these batteries, the flames they’ll create could possibly be very tough to extinguish.

Due to this danger, transportable chargers have been lengthy banned from checked baggage, with airways requiring passengers to place transportable chargers and every other lithium battery-powered units inside their carry-on luggage as an alternative.

But nonetheless, there have been 97 lithium battery-related incidents in aviation in 2025, and there have already been 14 accidents this 12 months, in response to the Federal Aviation Administration. The majority of the lithium battery-related air incidents that concerned smoke, hearth or excessive warmth stemmed from transportable chargers. The second greatest perpetrator was e-cigarettes, in response to the FAA information.

The most high-profile latest incident was in January 2025, when an Airbus airplane went up in flames on the tarmac at an airport in Busan, South Korea. Everyone 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 might have been the perpetrator. Just a few 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 regulators have banned transportable batteries from flights altogether, besides if the machine is clearly marked with a Chinese 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.

One manner you could shield 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.