Li-ion battery shipments ban for passenger planes

The International Civilian Aviation Organisation (ICAO), and a UN panel, has recommended that cargo shipments of rechargeable lithium batteries are banned from passenger airlines because of the risk of fire destroying planes. A defective battery can overheat, releasing explosive gases that, when ignited, can blow doors off cargo containers and engulf the plane in flames. At least three cargo planes have been destroyed since 2006, with the loss of four pilots. More than 30% of li-ion batteries are shipped by air. The ICAO proposed that the ban be lifted if the development of new packaging satisfied safety requirements.

A UN panel has recommended banning cargo shipments of rechargeable lithium batteries from passenger airliners because they can create fires capable of destroying planes, according to aviation officials familiar with the decision.

The International Civilian Aviation Organisation’s air navigation commission, the agency’s highest technical body, also proposed that the ban be lifted if new packaging could be developed that provided an acceptable level of safety.

Final approval from the ICAO top-level council is still needed. The council is scheduled to take up the matter in late February.

The officials spoke on condition that they were not named because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

Lithium-ion batteries are used to power everything from cellphones and laptops to hybrid and all-electric cars. About 5.4bn of the cells were manufactured worldwide in 2014. A battery is made up of two or more cells.

Most batteries are transported on cargo ships but about 30% are shipped by air.

Federal Aviation Administration tests showed a single damaged or defective battery could experience uncontrolled temperature increases known as thermal runaway. The overheating could spread throughout a shipment. It us not unusual for tens of thousands of batteries to be shipped in a single cargo container in the belly of a plane.

In FAA tests the overheating batteries have released explosive gases that, when ignited, have blown the doors off cargo containers and hurled boxes of batteries through the air before becoming engulfed in flames.

Engineers from FAA’s technical centre told a public meeting in 2015 that the explosions were forceful enough to knock the interior panels off cargo compartment walls. That would allow halon, the firefighting agent used in airliners, to escape, leaving nothing to prevent fires from spreading unchecked, they said.

Aviation safety experts believe at least three cargo planes have been destroyed by lithium battery fires since 2006. Four pilots died in those accidents.

The ban would not apply to cargo planes despite efforts by the International Federation of Air Line Pilot Associations to include them.

A trade association for the rechargeable battery industry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In March 2015 an organisation that represents aircraft manufacturers — including the world’s two largest, Boeing and Airbus — submitted a position paper to ICAO stating that airliners were not designed to withstand lithium battery fires and that continuing to accept battery shipments was “an unacceptable risk”.

Six months later the US decided to back a ban. “We believe the risk is immediate and urgent,” Angela Stubblefield, a Federal Aviation Administration hazardous materials safety official, said at a public meeting on 8 October

Proponents of a ban say any such battery can experience thermal runaway if it has even a slight defect, is subject to extreme temperatures like when being left on a hot runway in the sun, or is damaged when a package is dropped or knocked about.

In late October 2015 an ICAO panel on the transport of dangerous goods voted 11-7 against a ban. The United States, Russia, Brazil, China and Spain, as well as organisations representing airline pilots and aircraft manufacturers, voted in favour of the ban. The Netherlands, Canada, France, Germany, Australia, Italy, United Arab Emirates, South Korea, Japan and the United Kingdom, as well as the airline trade group, voted against it.

However in early December another ICAO panel on aircraft safety voted to recommend a ban. With two different panel recommendations, ICAO council members representing Brazil, the US and Russia requested earlier this month that a navigation commission, which is a step above the panels, craft a recommendation on a ban.

Aviation officials interviewed by the Associated Press said they could not predict whether the council, which has 36 members, would ultimately agree to a ban.