The security theater needs to go on. In the meantime batteries represent a much bigger risk with potential in flight fires but I guess nobody cares enough to do anything about it.
100 watts for an hour ~= 36000 watts for ten seconds. Every fully charged laptop roughly has enough energy to bring an automobile up to highway speed (once). How many of these laptops exist on a typical flight?
And what would you suggest be done to reduce the risk? Asking passengers to travel without phones or laptops isn't realistic.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/suzannerowankelleher/2025/08/26...
It's statistics at the end of the day. If you have 300 people carrying several batteries in the body of the airplane, and any of them has enough energy to cause an immediate fire, you are playing with odds.
> What we should do
Completely banning portable batteries (chargers) would be a start. You cut the risk by a lot already because they are rampant.
At least on a plane, you have well-trained staff and fire extinguishers readily available.
Skyphone installation by the airlines led to "flight mode" because the horror of not paying is far more important than safety.
All of this fake, useless theatre undermines real security and makes us less safe while picking our pockets.
Fluids to bring down a plane? FFS every human is equipped with a bladder. Why was this charlatanism ever tolerated at all?
It's an attack that never happened and wouldn't. It's nuts.
They should have banned underwear because the underwear bomber /did/ happen. But sure, that's awkward and would impact revenue, (I don't wanna go nude so I won't fly unless I have to), so the ridiculousness of doing so triumphed where it did not with water and shoes.
Lock on the cockpit door was worthwhile (unless the threat is a psychotic German copilot, worked bad then). Also the successful terrorist strategy had expired useless even before the end of its first use on 9/11 as passengers found out, realised new rules: fight back now, hard.
Bastards at Heathrow stole a sealed jar of Fortnum & Mason jam from me. For security! Because onion jam could blow up a plane. FFS. But sure, you could buy the same stuff once through security and take it on the plane at inflated prices. Where there was a financial incentive to do so and a secial interest to lobby for it, the idiocy stopped. In 5 meters.
The purpose of these moronic rules was /not/ what you think it was. It was just a sequence of moronic compromises around dumb ideas influenced by special interest. You can't respect it and respect your own intelligence. Security is actually important, do better.
By the time “airplane mode” became common on mobile phones, the phones installed in airplane seats were already decommissioned in most cases.
They can't do this because it would destroy their credibility with the ignorant as much as it has with the informed, that would get a critical mass. So yeah we have "flight mode" and every single flight someone breaks it. It isn't remotely enforceable so it is just as well that connecting to cellular is harmless. (Planes also have expensive wifi instead of expensive skyphones now, so the financial incentive remains.)
Airplane mode was a figleaf to counter "your phone must be switched off" which was the old-school airplane mode enforcement.
Undermining security for little bits of money for special interest. The naked corruption of purpose could make you angry if you let it.
It seems like something that is high risk during flight shouldn't be left to passenger compliance with spoken instructions.
other asian carriers will say they can't be in overhead compartments