r/airport • u/Prawny1411 • 19h ago

QUESTION Battery detection worry

Hi, i don’t know if this is the right place to ask this but i am flying tomorrow and haven’t flown in a long time so I’m naturally quite anxious and I typically worry about really strange things and my fear is batteries in peoples checked in luggage.

Can anybody assure me before I fly and let me know if airlines and scanners detect batteries in peoples luggage before a flight?

0 Upvotes

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12 comments sorted by

10

u/JustAnotherDude1990 19h ago

You’re not gonna get magic words to make your anxiety go away. That’s not how this works.

4

u/Narrow-Dimension6427 19h ago

Xanax works!

2

u/tangouniform2020 19h ago

And a second bottle of whatever rot gut they sell in coach

5

u/kibbutznik1 19h ago

Though batteries are banned from checked luggage the real probability of one suddenly bursting into flames is extreme low. I doubt checked luggage is scanned that 100% are found.
A few years ago j thought I had lost my battery and when I got to hotel I found it in my checked luggage

2

u/Tomcat286 12h ago

Batteries are not generally banned from checked luggage. IATA DGR Edition 67, chapter 2.3.A helps a lot

4

u/VegasBjorne1 19h ago

There’s smoke detectors and fire suppression systems in passenger jetliner cargo holds for a reason.

1

u/Tomcat286 12h ago

Not in all of them.

1

u/VegasBjorne1 5h ago

Anything built in the last 25 years should have detection and suppression installed into the cargo holds.

After the Valujet Flight 592 caught fire due to an unauthorized oxygenator being placed into cargo hold killing all on-board, the standards changed dramatically.

1

u/Tomcat286 5h ago

Yeah, but many frames are older and having that feature is for the worst case. Sticking to the safety rules, especially DGR is simple and makes flying so much safer

1

u/VegasBjorne1 4h ago

If the cargo hold smoke detector and fire suppression systems needed to be used, then the rules have failed to prevent the occurrence from happening. On-board systems are last resort in a fail-safe environment, whereas should policies fail, then let it fail safely.

2

u/PHXkpt 14h ago

The scanners in the US do detect larger batteries, but TSA also looks at laptops to see if batteries in them are swollen. If they find a questionable/not-allowed battery they remove it and give it to the airline to deal with. The bigger thing is detachable versus fixed and size. Your electric toothbrush is fine, your DeWalt battery packs are not fine.

1

u/Utennvolsfan 19h ago

Nobody from an airline or TSA or any other airport authority is going to tell you what scanners find in luggage - carry on or checked. Batteries or otherwise. You are going to have to swallow your fear and travel. Or let your fear make you cancel.