CAL to introduce power bank restrictions

BRENT PIN­HEIRO

Pro­duc­er

brent.pin­[email protected]

Pow­er banks have be­come a must-have trav­el ac­ces­so­ry as pas­sen­gers seek to re­main con­nect­ed. How­ev­er, Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) is set to roll out a new pol­i­cy lim­it­ing their use in the cab­in in the com­ing weeks.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that un­der the new re­stric­tions, each pas­sen­ger will be per­mit­ted to bring on­ly two lithi­um bat­tery-pow­ered pow­er banks on­board (not ex­ceed­ing 100 Wh), which should al­ways be with­in reach and not stored in the over­head bins. Pas­sen­gers will no longer be al­lowed to use pow­er banks to charge their per­son­al de­vices, nor will they be al­lowed to recharge the pow­er banks.

The re­stric­tion does not ex­tend to seat­back pow­er. CAL’s Boe­ing 737-8s all of­fer seat­back pow­er; how­ev­er, the ATR 72-600 fleet does not. Pow­er banks must be car­ried in car­ry-on bag­gage on­ly and not placed in checked lug­gage. Cab­in crew will still be al­lowed to car­ry and use pow­er banks in keep­ing with op­er­a­tional re­quire­ments.

The new rules will bring CAL in line with a March 27 de­ci­sion by the In­ter­na­tion­al Civ­il Avi­a­tion Or­ga­ni­za­tion (ICAO) to in­tro­duce an ad­den­dum to the Tech­ni­cal In­struc­tions. The ad­den­dum reg­u­lates the use of pow­er banks on­board air­craft. ICAO took the de­ci­sion af­ter a se­ries of lithi­um bat­tery fires across the globe, most se­ri­ous­ly the hull loss of an Air­bus A321 which caught fire while prepar­ing to taxi for take-off. Twen­ty-sev­en peo­ple were in­jured in that in­ci­dent.

Pow­er banks can pose an in­creased risk to pas­sen­gers and air­craft due to a process called ther­mal run­away. Ac­cord­ing to the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Ad­min­is­tra­tion (FAA), ther­mal run­away can oc­cur with­out warn­ing, ei­ther due to man­u­fac­tur­ing de­fects or if the bat­tery is dam­aged, over­heat­ed, or ex­posed to wa­ter. FAA da­ta shows that there were over 700 ver­i­fied lithi­um bat­tery in­ci­dents be­tween March 3, 2006, and April 15, 2026.

Amer­i­can car­ri­ers South­west and Amer­i­can Air­lines have al­ready in­tro­duced sim­i­lar poli­cies.