You may have seen the news stories in recent months about power banks on aircraft either catching fire in overhead lockers or causing flights to be diverted because they were packed incorrectly, and this is something we are becoming increasingly concerned by.

Travel Weekly ran a story last month about a campaign that the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has launched, urging passengers to pack their power banks correctly. The fire risk posed by lithium batteries has been identified as the “number one safety risk to aircraft”, but estimates hundreds of batteries are being packed incorrectly on a typical flight.

The CAA is reminding passengers to take mobile phones, vapes and power banks on board and not packing the devices in checked-in luggage.

Power packs themselves should never be charged on a flight and laptops should be turned off completely if they are packed in checked-in luggage.

You can read more from the CAA on this topic HERE.

We urge LATA members to share this link with customers in their travel documents: https://www.caa.co.uk/packright and if you would like any visual assets for documentation, you can download here and here.