Airline passengers are being warned not to pack power banks, vapes or other products powered by lithium batteries in their hold luggage, as the fire risk posed by lithium batteries is now the number one safety risk to aircraft, according to the UK aviation regulator.

The advice is to pack such products in your hand luggage and to refrain from recharging products from a power bank during your flight. Although a fire in hand luggage would be a serious incident, the fire would be noticed and easier to fight than if a fire took hold in a plane’s hold! Multiple plane crashes and catastrophic in-flight fires have been directly attributed to lithium batteries.

The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) says the average person now takes four different lithium-powered devices on a flight, as most electronic devices nowadays are powered by these batteries.

Lithium batteries store huge amounts of energy in a small space, and if the batteries overheat or are defective, a fire can result that spreads very quickly and is extremely hard to extinguish.

In 2024, 316 incidents of devices with lithium batteries detected in hold bags were reported to UK authorities. In 2025, that rose to 643.