Transporting Batteries

[R.Perry]

Earlier today I was doing my airport bum thing listening so some of the stories. One of the old guys is retired FAA examiner, and another retired airline pilot.
The subject of laptop, drone, and assorted lithium batteries and the airline restrictions. Sam, the retired FAA examiner looked over at me and said I hadn’t done my homework, nothing new.

It’s because of the 787 Dreamliner. The 787 has two very large lithium-ion battery packs that are used to power on board computers, lights, and even power to the landing gear backup system.
Well Boeing learned that when you get lithium batteries real hot, they catch fire then explode and that is exactly what happened twice, then the 787 was grounded for a while until Boeing came up with a fix, they stuck the batteries in heavy steel boxes and vented them to the atmosphere, I guess that’s a fix.

What I’m told, therefore the airlines are so freaked out about transporting lithium batteries, and that makes it very difficult for UAV pilots to transport their drones and batteries.
The thing is lithium batteries that aren’t hot and under load present no danger as far as I know.
That is why I don’t drain my batteries below 30%, they are never much over 100 degrees. However run them down to below 10% and see how hot they are.
I know this subject has been addressed before, but I believe like myself I didn’t understand why the restrictions.

 

[PatR]

The 787 did indeed initiate the large scale battery fears but a couple of air cargo planes went down to suspected lithium battery fires long before the 787 debacle. One was a 747 shortly after take off in the Middle East, I believe belonged to UPS, carrying a shipment of new lithium batteries, killing the crew.

There was another battery cargo fire that occurred on a commercial jet while it was being loaded in either Indonesia or Malaysia.

Our military has not liked to air ship them due to fire danger at least as far back as 2005 when I became involved with military UAV’s. Obtaining new lithium batteries for some of the more popular high power tactical flashlights was always a pain because of combustible battery fears. Same thing applied to batteries for PRC radios.

Then there’s the problem of Chinese shippers that have deliberately mis-labeled battery capacities to get around regulatory quantity limitations. Doing that allowed them to ship more batteries for lower shipping costs. At least one manufacturer applied a label listing lower capacities over the original higher capacity labels, and still label battery capacities lower than actual to this day. That be Yuneec.