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libria 1350 days ago

You 2 are talking around each other. You're probably both right about 2 different technologies.

Lithium ions are rechargeable batteries; lithium primaries are non rechargeable, high performance batteries.

Apple air tags use lithium primaries, but I suspect airlines do not care and both kinds are banned (from loaded-in-device-in-baggage flight).

TheRealPomax 1351 days ago

You may want to tell Apple that, because they explicitly call out that they use lithium batteries over in https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT211670

mplewis9z 1350 days ago

Lithium =/= Lithium-ion

ryandrake 1350 days ago

None of this matters. If you search through the article (or the original article that claimed the ban), you will not find the word "lithium". I don't see how this rathole on lithium batteries has anything to do with the article.

RC_ITR 1350 days ago

Not OP but the point is that Li-ions are rechargeable and therefore more susceptible to shorting/thermal runaway than lithium batteries which are not wired to be rechargeable and therefor less at risk for shorting/thermal runaway.

People who investigated the claims of the article this one is replying to have found that the original source of this claim was a German article where someone called Lufthansa and asked this question. The answer they got from the Lufthansa representative was essentially citing an ICAO rule about devices with lithium batteries - which got twisted in this "Lufthansa doesn't allow AirTags" narrative.

thombat 1350 days ago

The EU Aviation Safety Agency explicitly treats them as equivalent for safety purposes: https://www.easa.europa.eu/system/files/dfu/Background%20Inf...

robocat 1350 days ago

Air New Zealand doesn’t allow trackers either - I expect most airlines don’t, so I don’t know why Lufthansa is getting shit here. Air NZ says: “Baggage Trackers (battery powered): Only battery powered baggage trackers that can be turned off i.e. are not in sleep mode, will be accepted in checked baggage. Some devices have an automatic On/Off feature, but not all. Always check the specifications of the device you want to buy as it may not be accepted by us. For those devices that have an auto On/Off feature, the tracking App must not be used in flight.” — https://www.airnewzealand.co.nz/travelling-with-lithium-batt...

FAA specifically allows non-rechargeable small Lithium cells if in equipment in checked baggage. However, the table on the second pages says that small battery/cell spares are not allowed in checked baggage. “Lithium metal batteries (a.k.a.: non-rechargeable lithium, primary lithium). These batteries are often used with cameras and other small personal electronics. Consumer-sized batteries (up to 2 grams of lithium per battery) may be carried. This includes all the typical non-rechargeable lithium batteries used in cameras (AA, AAA, 123, CR123A, CR1, CR2, CRV3, CR22, 2CR5, etc.) as well as the flat round lithium button cells.” — https://www.faa.gov/hazmat/packsafe/resources/media/Airline_...

I didn't say lithium ion, I said lithium - they indeed use a different lithium-based chemistry.

Note that lithium itself is a very volatile metal (it starts burning in contact with water, for example).

Which is why this isn't about the battery fires. It's about the RF of hundreds of devices.

gambiting 1351 days ago

So why is it fine for literally every single passanger to have bluetooth headphones on during the duration of the flight, but somehow trackers are bad?

1) It's not. They ask people to switch off all transmitters during flights (and later to during takeoff and landing) because of RF emissions. 2) Because you can't turn trackers off, especially when they're in the hold.

Read the initial article that started all this, it even says that reason is because of transmissions.

spoonalious 1351 days ago

Except they don’t because most have onboard wifi now. And most allow Bluetooth headphones, including Lufthansa:

Lufthansa: Bluetooth headphones are allowed during every part of the flight.

gbin 1351 days ago

So clearly this is again an airline using a rule as a "proxy" for something else they want.

Like no chewing tobacco... Yeah it is gross but it is probably not a safety issue.

mutt2016 1351 days ago

Flying is among the most dreadful activities I do. The whole thing is unsettling from the moment I pull up to the airport.

This is one of many absolutely ridiculous things the airline industry has enforced.

But.. I must fly places, so I just suffer like the rest.

bombcar 1351 days ago

Note that voip calls are prohibited even though you can get internet access. This is because of annoying other customers, not because of safety.

1) The wifi system is EMC certified and tested with the flight instrumentation. Dozens of different consumer devices are not.

2) Lufthansa "allows it during the entire flight without restriction – even during take-off and landing unless the crew instruct otherwise"(https://bluetoothtechworld.com/can-i-use-bluetooth-headphone...). In other words, unless you're told to turn it off in the event of some problem, which is something you can't do when it's in the luggage hold of the aircraft.

Again, the articles specifies this is about EMC.

ajsnigrutin 1351 days ago

Their wifi system might be, but a 100 phones and tablets, some from reputable manufacturers, some from "10TB tablet apple samsung iphone" sellers from aliexpress, and the system still works.

Imagine planes falling down because a single passenger had a malfunctioning phone on it... the lawsuits against boeing/airbus would be astronomical.

fphhotchips 1350 days ago

Oh yeah, I guarantee that's on all the emergency checklists. "Ask very nicely if all the passengers can turn off their bluetooth headsets".

Also, I'm pretty confident that Lufthansa's Airbus and Boeing planes are the same as everybody else's Airbus and Boeing planes. If there was an EMC issue that they were running into from Airtags, it would have been jumped on by the national aviation administrations so fast your head would spin. It would be major international news. It would not be an obscure rule with misleading and contradictory guidance coming from a single airline.

zahllos 1351 days ago

I suspect the difference is more about the spectrum in use. Airtags can be found and interact via Ultra-Wideband (UWB), which essentially means low power broadcast across 3.1GHz up to 10GHz approx. This includes some spectrum used for GNSS.

One is probably fine but a hold full of them and people's iPhones emitting on UWB also?

By contrast Bluetooth, WiFi etc use the ISM radio bands, which can simply be avoided by any transmission the plane itself needs to do.

8note 1351 days ago

Is that certification actually important?

It seems to me like a denylist would be more useful than an Allowlist at this point.

Almost no consumer electronics are dangerous to a plane

AlfeG 1350 days ago

All airline I've been travel, disable WiFi during takeoff and landing.

reaperducer 1351 days ago

It's not. They ask people to switch off all transmitters during flights (and later to during takeoff and landing) because of RF emissions.

I think that's a little outdated.

I flew a few times a few months ago, and the passengers were repeatedly encouraged to hook up to the plane's wifi as soon as we boarded. No announcements were made about turning devices off. Not even during take-off or landing. I'm one of those people who pays attention to the announcements and reads the safety cards every time, so I was surprised.

I think the airlines think it's safer to have excitable people turned into gadget zombies during the flight to make the time pass faster and keep them from getting rowdy. The same function that the in-flight movie, drink, and meal used to serve before those were all value engineered away.

mbreese 1351 days ago

> passengers were repeatedly encouraged to hook up to the plane's wifi as soon as we boarded

I think this is to make sure that you have it setup early so any tech support can be handled early and to make sure you can download the airline app to your phone if needed. The aircrew can enable/disable the wifi at will. Next time look to see if it is working at takeoff. I’m honestly not sure if it will be or not, but it used to be a switch in the cabin.

Nextgrid 1351 days ago

> The aircrew can enable/disable the wifi at will.

Yes, but that does nothing when it comes to risk of radio emissions. Turning off the AP doesn't magically prevent client devices from doing whatever they want anyway. If there was a genuine risk of a client device interfering with the plane's equipment, turning off an AP wouldn't do anything about it, nor will asking the passengers to turn it off (some might not comply, forget or not even realize that their device has a Wi-Fi radio in it). You need either extreme control over every electronic device brought onboard (including X-ray scans, since implantable medical devices now have RF communication too), or enough shielding around the sensitive equipment to make RF no longer a risk - the latter has already been done for decades and RF is no longer (and I don't recall ever being actually) a threat to airplanes.

reaperducer 1351 days ago

Next time look to see if it is working at takeoff.

Considering the number of people glued to their screens during takeoff, if it suddenly stopped working, I think the cabin-wide moaning and groaning would have been obvious.

zwily 1351 days ago

They don’t ask you to turn off all radios during takeoff/landing anymore. Just cellular.

OJFord 1351 days ago

And some large percentage doesn't bother and it's absolutely fine.

Obviously. But it's not the point. Point was the concern - by their thinking - is not the battery in the AirTag but the transmitter.

I give up.

[0] https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/lithium-batteries-baggage

Here [0] is the FAA site about lithium battery powered devices in checked-in baggage. The ICAO has the same rule, but I haven't found a similarly concise statement.

> Devices containing lithium metal batteries or lithium ion batteries, including – but not limited to – smartphones, tablets, cameras and laptops, should be kept in carry-on baggage. If these devices are packed in checked baggage, they should be turned completely off, protected from accidental activation and packed so they are protected from damage. [emphasis mine]

XorNot 1350 days ago

LOL. This is about Lufthansa getting dragged in the media about their baggage handling screw ups and ongoing lying to customers about it while holding their luggage for months.

It is not - it is in fact a nothing burger. The original claim was based on a German article where someone called Lufthansa and asked if they can put AirTags in their checked-in luggage, and the Lufthansa representative answered with the existing regulation about Lithium (metal or ion) battery devices, which says they are accepted if they are completely powered off.

That's it - no one is enforcing this regulation in practice, especially not for AirTags or other small devices.

jbverschoor 1350 days ago

The BLE advertisement packet is max 270 bytes.

AirTags send these out once per second when the owner is near, otherwise once every 2 seconds.

Assume 500 passengers on a 747, and everyone has an AirTag, and let's assume worstcase, the tags are in-range:

500 pax * 270 = 135kbyte, or 1MBit/second of radio traffic. The equivalent of 4 bluetooth headphones.

This isn't about RF. This is about luggage claims. In the EU, consumers are heavily protected against delays, canceled flights, and lost luggage.

Izikiel43 1351 days ago

Is the problem with batteries or lithium batteries?

AirTags have non lithium batteries

Youden 1351 days ago

Lithium metal (e.g. coin cells) or Lithium-ion (e.g. smartphones).

Both - when installed in a device - can be transported in checked luggage though: https://www.iata.org/contentassets/05e6d8742b0047259bf3a700b...

IATA actually has a document specifically addressing tracking devices: https://www.iata.org/contentassets/05e6d8742b0047259bf3a700b...

My reading of that document indicates that an AirTag should be fine, as low-powered wireless communication is allowed (page 9, item 3).

pacificmint 1351 days ago

AirTags use CR2032 batteries which are, in fact, lithium batteries.

They are lithium primary cells though, not lithium ion cells, which are usually what is banned.

There is no distinction between the two in terms of regulations (all the ones I've seen are explicitly calling both lithium ion and lithium metal batteries).

fortran77 1351 days ago

Stop spreading misinformation:

>[T]he CR2032 battery is a Lithium-manganese dioxide battery (LiMn02). It is composed of a Mn02 cathode and a lithium anode. The device is specified for a 225 milliamp hours (mAh) and typically operates over a temperature range of –20 ºC to +70 ºC.

You will find some alkaline versions available from some vendors, but it's not the norm.

Now there may be a chance that Lufthansa didn't mean to include all types of lithium cells or batteries, but the vague wording doesn't seem to suggest that.

[0] https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/lithium-batteries-baggage

Lithium batteries of any kind have the same regulations in aviation. Here[0] is a link from the US FAA, but you'll find similar at ICAO or any other civil aviation authorities.