After Fires, Ban on phones and laptops looking possible on Boeing 787 flights | Hacker News Reader

After Fires, Ban on phones and laptops looking possible on Boeing 787 flights

venturebeat.com

11 pointschrisacky9 comments

However, a British Airways PR representative that I contacted said there has been no change to airline policy regarding smartphones, tablets, or laptops, and asked to see the IATA notification. The representative did say that it was conceivable that a change had been made to British Airways’ cargo-carrying regulations — in addition to its passenger service, the company runs IAG Cargo, a commercial cargo shipping service – but had no personal knowledge of any changes as of early Sunday morning.

Article denies the headline... Move along.

John Koetsier of VentureBeat apparently doesn't know how to do research. Quoting from the article, they are "attempting to access a copy of the IATA bulletin." The changes were easy to find: http://www.iata.org/whatwedo/cargo/dgr/Documents/DGR54-Adden...

The changes are even nicely highlighted in yellow.

Note especially the parts "This prohibition does not apply to: ... lithium batteries (rechargeable and non-rechargeable) covered by the Provisions for Dangerous Goods Carried by Passengers or Crew (see 2.3.2 to 2.3.5 and Table 2.3.A)." (That's for Cathay Pacific Airways, but the others are essentially the same.)

The "Provisions for Dangerous Goods Carried by Passengers or Crew", Table 2.3.A is at http://www.iata.org/whatwedo/cargo/dgr/Documents/DG-Passenge... . It says:

You may have "Lithium ion battery powered equipment containing batteries over 100 Wh but not exceeding 160 Wh." as carry-on, in checked-baggage, and on ones person.

You may have "Spare lithium ion batteries with a Watt-hour rating exceeding 100 Wh but not exceeding 160 Wh for consumer electronic devices. Maximum of two spare batteries may be carried in carry-on baggage only. These batteries must be individually protected to prevent short circuits." Note that these are not permitted in checked baggage.

None of this has changed. The only things that have changed are how to handle lithium metal batteries as cargo.

And to the person who posted this, and the people who thought it might be affecting them - the article was oozing with Betteridge's law. There's no information, but the writer ran with it anyway, inserting a "?" for CYA power. "The reason why journalists use that style of headline is that they know the story is probably bollocks, and don’t actually have the sources and facts to back it up, but still want to run it."

Linkbait. There is nothing specific in this to 787 flights and no airline is actually banning passengers taking laptops etc or even saying they are thinking about it, it's just some airlines looking at not carrying batteries as cargo.

Ain't gonna happen. There's no way people will be prevented from traveling with laptops or mobile phones. Do we stop driving with the much higher stakes of tens of thousands of people dying yearly in car accidents? Of course not. Any airline that tried to impose such regulations would face near-immediate bankruptcy.

This seems like an intentional misunderstanding for press attention. How do you get from "shipments of lithium-ion and lithium batteries on cargo aircraft" to banning laptops?

The headline is wrong, it would not be limited to Boeing 787 (which is sensible, as LiIon batteries aren't combustible just on that plane). Anyway, it seems nobody quoted in the article really thinks a ban on the batteries would cover devices which uses the batteries. So I would think the inference the article is drumming up isn't looking very likely at all.

I have a 15 hour flight on Cathay Pacific coming up, this is a deal breaker, if true... there's no way I'm going to be away from my laptop for two weeks on account of a carrier's irrational fears.

Article states it's only on cargo planes, not yours. It's also full of unconfirmed statements and I would give no real value to it until someone who can do a proper fact checking talks about it.

It won't happen here in Australia. QANTAS, our national airline, has just deployed iPads to every seat as the new iteration of their in flight entertainment

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