There’s more to the convention that airline passengers should keep any lithium-ion batteries with them. In other words, none of these batteries, including power banks, may go in aircraft holds. Rules are rules, but when a power bank diverts an EasyJet flight, is this going too far?
How a Power Bank Diverted an EasyJet Flight
Everything was going according to plan on a flight from Egypt to the UK. Then suddenly, an EasyJet passenger remembered their power bank was charging in their checked baggage. They did the right thing by alerting the cabin crew, although they might not have expected what happened next.
The aircraft captain decided to play the game by safety rules. They told the other passengers what they had learned, and that they were diverting their aircraft to the nearest airport. This just happened to be near Rome, the capital city of Italy.
The BBC news channel was curious to see what happened when the power bank diverted the EasyJet from a regular flight plan. They accessed the FlightRadar24 log, and tracked the aircraft cruising at 36,000 feet. Then it suddenly took a sharp left-hand turn, and landed at Rome 20 minutes later.
Should A Power Bank Have This Much Power?
Lithium-ion batteries certainly do pack a punch in terms of their energy per weight and size. However, when something goes wrong inside them, they can release this energy as heat. This can lead to a very hot battery fire, that, in an extreme case, could bring a passenger aircraft down.
In this particular incident though, the lithium battery in the offending power back was found to behaving normally, according to BBC news channel. So did the aircraft pilot take the right decision when they diverted to Rome? Allowing a tiny power bank to divert an EasyJet flight, could not have been easy decision …
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