New TSA regulations for spare batteries on airplanes – ridiculous
By Will Park on Sunday, January 6th, 2008 at 5:19 PM PST In Announcements
File this one under “Idiot Bureaucrats and their rules.”
The great thing about bureaucracy is that there’s no end to the supply of nonsensical, needlessly complex, potential harmful regulations enforced under the guise of making life safer for society.
Since we’re all apparently incapable of keeping those spare lithium-ion batteries safely stowed during your flight to “wherever,” the TSA has come up with new guidelines on how to carry those extra batteries.
In light of all the recent lithium-ion battery explosions, the TSA has decided to take action. You can’t check your spare batteries anymore – that is, unless you have too many spare batteries. But, “too many spare batteries” is defined as the number of grams of lithium you happen to have on your person. So, if you happen to be carrying over the designated limit of lithium gram-age (you do know just how many grams of lithium each of your batteries contains, right?), you can carry the spares on board. Oh, and you can carry-on those spare batteries if they’re installed in some sort of device (external charger, for example). Confused yet?
We’re sure we could abide by these new rules if we really tried. But, seriously, are we going to go through the trouble when TSA agents probably won’t know what to do anyway. Has anyone ever taken a look at TSA agents? We’re pretty sure they not exactly up-to-date on just how grams of lithium a particular battery contains – that is, if they can even decipher the TSA’s new rules. Color us annoyed.
Maybe we should just stop reporting all those gadget-related mishaps, that way the TSA will never hear about it and they won’t have to “protect” us with retarded regulations.
[Via: WMExperts]
The Dept of Transportation put the battery regulation into effect after a UPS plane went up in flames on the runway.
Not the TSA.
Pretty bizarre, but not the first time to find out about changes to the job on the news — our handlers still haven’t a clue about the changes. I suspect the FAA released the news item and the “journalists” attributed it to TSA. Failure to connect the dots on the part of the news media adds to confusion for a travelling public that can’t tell the difference between carry-on and checked baggage.
and it only applies to SPARE batteries and then those of a professional standard(photographer batteries basically)
anything up to the size of 2x most laptop battery is exempt
and yes its an old DOT ruling, the TSA is catching up with, has nothing to do with exploding chinese batteries
it has to do with exploding batteries on a ups plane parked on the runway
November 4, 2008 my 4 AAA batteries & blunt nose under 1/2″ tip scissors were removed from my carry-on luggage at the Puerto Vallarta airport in Mexico on our return flight to California. Somehow LAX TSA felt these items were safe enough to allow me to have them in my carry-on bags into Mexico – but the Mexican TSA decided to make up their own rules.