I would use a battery pack less if the outlets on the planes actually worked! On my last 4 flights I've had outlets completely disabled.
And when they do work, my North American two prong plug falls right out half of the time.
Virgin and Qantas to ban use of portable power banks after string of fires
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Re: Virgin and Qantas to ban use of portable power banks after string of fires
#22As batteries pack more and more energy into smaller and smaller spaces, what could possibly go wrong?
Re: Virgin and Qantas to ban use of portable power banks after string of fires
#23I would use a battery pack less if the outlets on the planes actually worked! On my last 4 flights I've had outlets completely disabled.
Or make the seatback USB solution a bit more modular and update it every 5 years. Nobody is bringing a toaster on board, they just need something more than a 5 Watt USB A port for their devices.
Re: Virgin and Qantas to ban use of portable power banks after string of fires
#24Meanwhile you can carry a nuclear bomb on a train and nobody even bothers to check the id or ticket up until you are on board. Irrational fear of flight strikes again, it's a very long list actually of standards that aviation has to comply with in order not to thrive but to merely exist , all because people are irrationally fearful about being suspended mid air. It's the same thing for nuclear
A train can go from "cruising speed" to letting passengers off to escape a fire in about a minute. A plane might take anywhere from five minutes to several hours to be able to safely let passengers out. Personally I feel that's a good enough reason to impose more robust restrictions on Things Which May Cause Fire on planes compared to trains. Especially in the case of lithium batteries where they're more or less impo…
I agree with the concept of comparing risk being the meaningful approach, but I disagree this is how you go about measuring risk. How many people are being injured/killed per million km or something is the type of metric. Air travel far exceeds those types of metrics vs other common modes of travel, yet is always the first one to be further focused on how bad it could potentially be.
Re: Virgin and Qantas to ban use of portable power banks after string of fires
#25Doesn't every cell phone have a highly volatile, made in China battery in it as well? What if they started banning smartphones on flights! Oh the humanity!
> Doesn't every cell phone have a highly volatile, made in China battery in it as well?
They're smaller, and thus contain less energy, and are typically also less powerful.
Re: Virgin and Qantas to ban use of portable power banks after string of fires
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
Uncontrolled fire in a plane is almost certain death if you don't land within minutes. You cannot land once the fire takes out the cables necessary for flight controls. Airplanes can still operate until landing after various mistreatments but uncontrolled fire is not one of them.
What are the odds that a lithium battery would cause uncontrolled fire? We are around them daily, ever since the 80s-90s , to this day I have never seen one in person. Look at this guy, he puts a screwdriver through phones for show off on youtube, intentionally damaging the battry...nothing dangerous or uncontrolled happens, the little smoke is the equivalent of a couple of cigarettes. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/…
Non-zero:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UPS_Airlines_Flight_6
> The report indicated that the fire was caused by the autoignition of the contents of a cargo pallet that contained more than 81,000 lithium batteries and other combustible materials
Re: Virgin and Qantas to ban use of portable power banks after string of fires
#27I would use a battery pack less if the outlets on the planes actually worked! On my last 4 flights I've had outlets completely disabled.
And when they do work, my North American two prong plug falls right out half of the time.
That just sounds like another way of not working. Even if there is power, if the socket doesn’t hold the prongs, it’s not going to power your device.
Re: Virgin and Qantas to ban use of portable power banks after string of fires
#28I would use a battery pack less if the outlets on the planes actually worked! On my last 4 flights I've had outlets completely disabled.
You have to look up the maximum wattage for the given cabin configuration. I’ve found 30W to be about as high as I can go without it cutting out. Use a phone charger for your laptop.
This is where it’s helpful to have a multi-port charger where they’re not all high-draw.
IMO more important to go with something flat or light that won’t fall out under its own weight.
Re: Virgin and Qantas to ban use of portable power banks after string of fires
#29Title should be updated to Virgin Australia. The article doesn't reference Virgin Atlantic or any other Virgin brands.
Re: Virgin and Qantas to ban use of portable power banks after string of fires
#30The title is misleading unless you read it carefully. They are not banning bringing power banks, they are banning using power banks. On the plane you have to keep the power bank on your person, but not use it. This would be a lot more defensible if they had high-power USB-C ports by every seat.
I’m sure you don’t mean this, but it sounds like you’re saying that if airlines don’t provide high-power USB, passengers would prefer the risk of dying in a fire rather than going without their devices. Of course, now that I type that out, I worry that perhaps many people would make exactly that choice. Regardless, I would argue that aviation safety is much more important than device preference - if that means, we all have to go back to paper books, then so be it.