According to Jonathan Nicholson at the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), for the airline industry, lithium-ion batteries are “if not number one, within the top three risks for a good few years now”.
A US recent study showed, external the industry was affected by two lithium-ion battery related incidents a week worldwide, he adds. Those incidents could range from passengers belatedly realising they’d left a device in checked baggage, to devices smoking or catching fire in airport baggage halls, or on flights.
But the results can be far more extreme. In January 2025 an Air Busan plane was destroyed on the tarmac in Gimhae Airport in South Korea, with investigators concluding a power bank battery pack left in an overhead luggage compartment was the culprit.
This prompted the International Air Transport Association (IATA) to launch a global campaign, external to encourage passengers to “Travel Smart with Lithium Batteries”.
There is nothing about flying that makes lithium-ion technology more dangerous, explains Nicholson. Rather, he said “it’s a lot harder to deal with at 32,000 feet in an aircraft cabin”.
Nicholson said the prevalence of lithium-ion related incidents was down to “more people, more flights, more devices”.
The US Federal Aviation Administration says that battery safety is a priority. Its data “continues to show an increase in confirmed incidents”, with 51 verified incidents for the year to July 15, external.
Pierre Kubiak, a principal engineer specialising in battery technology at the UK’s National Physical Laboratory, adds that while cell phones, power banks, tablets and laptops are the most obvious portable devices people bring on planes, smart watches, smart glasses and vapes were increasingly common.
“The lithium by itself doesn’t burn, it’s more all the organic material and plastic,” he explains. “The point is that it gets very, very hot, very fast. I mean, more than 700 to 1000 degrees super fast.”
The dangers of lithium-ion batteries really broke into the public consciousness following a series of phone-related fires about a decade ago.
Kubiak says that this had been down to flawed designs, and that manufacturers had since addressed concerns. South Korea is a leader in this space he adds.
But it was hard to control the proliferation of cheaply produced battery packs from East Asia, as well as vapes and other powered devices, with questionable quality controls. “Price is everything,” he says. Moreover, he adds, passengers often contribute to the problem by using unsuitable cables and not caring for devices.
