Message posted by JB737 on January 01, 2008 at 2:03:03 PST:
DOT's Happy New Year to us is announcing new regulations for carrying lithium and lithium-ion batteries on airplanes. There was a press release on 12/28, sort of short notice to travelers. It wasn't easy finding the actual rules, and there are a lot of poorly written, panic-inducing news stories and alleged summaries/analyses about it. Some act as if anyone carrying more than two normal laptop batteries is going to have them confiscated, which is not true (although TSA errors are of course always a risk, especially at the start date of a new policy...so PRINT OUT THE REGS and carry them with you). The actual rules are at the link provided: http://safetravel.dot.gov/whats_new_batteries.html Here is my opinion of what they mean: Only folks like TV-station video crews and overzealous laptop owners with large external/auxiliary batteries should be affected much. Normal-sized Li-ion batteries do not have a quantity or aggregate-weight limit in a carry-on, so long as each is below the "8 gram lithium equivalent" threshold, which they say is approximately 100 watt-hours per battery. I can just see them training TSA screeners that watt-hours = volts x mAh/1000, as lithium-equivalent weight isn't exactly written on any battery I've seen, but voltage and mAh capacity often are. My Li-ion camera batteries are around 11 watt-hours for the Nikon D70, and around 4 watt-hours for my Panasonic TZ3 point/shoot/video camera. So only a battery around 9 to 27 times the capacity of the EN-EL3, or 25x-75x the little Panasonic, even starts counting against your 2-large-battery limit. And anything bigger than the high end of that, is just not legally going on a passenger plane with you. HERE IS THE KEY REQUIREMENT: Lithium metal batteries are dealt with slightly differently, but again carry them on with you. Apparently almost all commercially available ones (e.g., Eveready AA lithium) fall below the "2 grams of lithium" limit per battery on that type of battery also. This is all common-sense stuff which I was already doing. I also rubber-band 7 or 10 AA batteries together (whether alkaline or NiMH), then ziploc each such bundle, to prevent them from shorting against anything while traveling. That way, if you empty your pocket change into the same luggage compartment as the batteries, it doesn't cause trouble. JB737
Carry all of your Li-ion batteries in your carry-on luggage, put each Li-ion battery in a separate case or plastic bag, and take measures to make sure there is no way they can short against anything metal (keys or whatever).
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