The rules for portable batteries in aircraft change. Here is what to know.

The rules for flying with portable batteries are becoming increasingly confusing because some airlines in Asia change their guidelines and specify the fire risk.

The airlines in South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Singapore have postponed restrictions because a fire destroyed an aircraft in Asphalt in South Korea in January, one of several recent aviations that made travelers anxious.

There is no final connection between portable batteries and the Air Busan Fire, and an examination is underway. However, since the rules are different in the airlines, you may need to pack or switch off such batteries when you get on an airplane. You need to know the following.

Which airlines have changed their rules and why?

From March 1st, passengers of all South Korean airlines will have to keep their portable chargers within the range of the arm and outside of Overhead. The government has implemented the rule to facilitate the fear of the risk of battery ranks, the Ministry of Transport said.

Some Taiwanese airlines have implemented similar changes that also came into force on March 1st. Eva Air and China Airlines announced a ban on using electricity banks in their aircraft, although the batteries can continue to be stored in Overhead compartments.

Thai Airways, Thailand’s flagship airline, then said that it would make a similar ban on using and loading electricity banks, citing “incidents of fires during the flight at international airlines that are suspected that they are connected to the use of Power Bank”. The latest episodes were Singapore Airlines and his budget subsidiary Scoot, who announced her own ban on Wednesday.

Since 2016, the International Civil Aviation Organization, the United Nations agency, which coordinates global aviation regulations, has banned lithium-ion batteries, which is usually common in power banks, from the loads of passenger aircraft.

However, there is no industrial standard about how airlines regulate electricity banks, said Mitchell Fox, director of the Asia Pacific Center for Aviation Safety.

They have only become part of everyday life in recent years, and some consumers may not know the risks, he said. “If you have an emerging problem, it takes a while for everyone to touch.”

What are the risks behind these batteries?

Lithium-ion batteries have been used for decades to operate smartphones and laptops and are often used in portable electricity banks.

Each lithium-ion battery has a cell that can quickly heat itself in a chain reaction that leads to it catching fire or exploding. The Federal Aviation Administration warns that this reaction can occur if the battery is damaged, overloaded, overheated or exposed to water. It can also happen if the battery has a manufacturing error.

Some products that use lithium-ion batteries, including smartphones, laptops and electric vehicles, have strict regulations and quality control standards, said Neraj Sharma, professor of chemistry at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, which is studying batteries. Others, such as power banks, e-cigarettes and vehicles such as e-bikes and scooters, are less regulated and increase the risk of malfunction.

“Make sure you get your devices from reputable manufacturers,” said Professor Sharma.

How often do batteries in airplanes catch fire?

Incidents with lithium-ion batteries in US airlines have increased. Last year there were 84, from 32 in 2016. This included cases – in the cabins in both passenger and freight aircraft – in which batteries caught fire, smoke out or overheated. Portable chargers were the greatest fault in these incidents, followed by e-cigarettes, according to the FAA

The airlines around the world require passengers to pack replacement lithium-ion batteries in their hand luggage instead of in their opposing bags so that smoke or fire can be quickly determined from the batteries. In the cargo hold, a fire cannot be determined by the automatic fire extinguishing system of an aircraft if it has already become a critical problem.

“If there is a fire, they would rather have it in a cabin than in a tested luggage, and they would rather have it closer to a person than in the overhead container where it is more difficult to get it out and manage the fire,” said Keith Tonkin, managing director of aviation projects, an aviation consulting company in Brisbane, Australia.

What do flight crews do when there is a fire?

Fires in aircraft cabins caused by lithium-ion batteries are rarely fatal, and flight crews are generally well ready to deal with them, said Tonkin.

In many cases, the passengers will notice their overheating of the electronics and inform the crew members who put the device into a thermal damper bag or in water, with a low disturbance of the flight, according to the FAA in some cases, flight attendants or passengers notice smoke in the cabin and discover that a device has caught with overheating or fire.

In 2024, two portable batteries that were connected to each other, a fire on board Bangkok to Seoul, which, according to Yonhap, a South Korean news agency, was operated by Eastar Jet, a South Korean budget. The flight crew immediately noticed the smoke and poured water onto the batteries to drive the fire, the agency reported.