Japan moves to ban power-bank use on domestic flights

Japan is moving toward tighter restrictions on power banks aboard commercial flights: when liability, standards, and insurance don’t fully tame a risk, the state reaches for blanket rules that push the problem onto passengers.

The Independent reports that Japan plans to ban the use of power banks on planes from April under new guidelines tied to the Civil Aeronautics Act, citing NHK. Passengers on domestic Japanese airlines would be barred from using portable chargers in-flight and also prevented from charging lithium-ion devices via onboard power outlets. The reported rules would limit travelers to two power banks per person in carry-on baggage, with a maximum capacity of 160Wh per unit.

Japan already bans lithium-ion batteries from checked luggage, and last July it tightened cabin rules to require power banks to remain visible and not stored in overhead bins. The rules move from “keep an eye on it” to “don’t use it at all.”

The justification is that lithium-ion thermal runaway is hard to extinguish in a confined cabin. Japan’s National Institute of Technology recorded 123 accidents related to mobile batteries in 2024, up from 47 in 2020, according to The Independent. That’s a large increase — though incident counts are notoriously sensitive to reporting rules, consumer uptake, and what gets classified as an “accident.” The UN’s International Civil Aviation Organization is also discussing potential rule changes, the paper notes.

Recent high-profile fires have increased regulatory urgency. The Independent points to Air Busan’s response after a major fire destroyed one of its planes on the runway, leading the airline to ban power banks in overhead-bin luggage. Aviation authorities tend to treat “rare but catastrophic” events as a mandate for universal behavioral controls, even when the underlying failure modes are mostly about product quality, counterfeit cells, and poor battery management.

A more market-oriented approach would start with enforceable manufacturer standards, traceable supply chains, and meaningful product liability — not turning every passenger into an amateur hazardous-materials handler. But airlines and regulators prefer rules that are easy to explain, easy to enforce, and easy to blame on the consumer.

The policy shift is an admission that the ecosystem can’t reliably distinguish safe devices from junk. So the state does what it does best: it standardizes inconvenience.

Whether this is “security theater” depends on whether the rules reduce the probability of the worst-case event more than they expand the scope of arbitrary cabin policing. Either way, the message is clear: if your pocket-sized battery becomes a systemic risk, the system will regulate your pocket — not the manufacturers who sold it to you.