Just read this and if it goes through it will probably lead to higher prices and even longer wait times.
http://news.yahoo.com/battery-fires-faa-back-ban-passenger-plane-shipments-145515140—finance.html
Just when they started coming through reliably again.
Buy now!
I just read the article and some of the comments. People seem to have no clue. Major brands have very safe cells. Ban the Chinese knockoffs and cheap brands, and the risk would diminish almost entirely. Maybe create a certification program for the major manufacturers so they still get to ride.
PANIC TIME!!! 
> ban the … knockoffs
A ban increases the payoff for making convincing fakes. Prohibition doesn’t work.
Problem is — the people faking good cells have no concern for the risk — nobody can reach them.
Problem is — there’s no clean safe technology for making rechargeable batteries yet. They are being reinvented constantly.
The old manufacturing tools and methods get sold off to people who use them to make cheap shit.
Ban the shrinkwrap, maybe?
Read my whole post. I suggested only allowing the major brands to ship via air/passenger. Even added that they could use a certification system. Anyone who doesn’t pass certification doesn’t get to ship - period. Labels don’t matter. Making your fakes more convincing doesn’t matter. Those things will get you nowhere.
Yeah, I just have no faith that a rule against anything stops it from happening, when there’s profit for someone in getting around the rule.
The tighter the chain of custody, the higher the cost.
I doubt anyone would implement a perfect valid identification system for our little flashlight batteries, just to save us the time involved in having them shipping by cargo carrier instead of on passenger aircraft.
They’re still not doing well identifying genuine vs. fake gear for aircraft parts and nuclear power plants.
[quote] We live in a world where anything and everything is counterfeited — iPhones, sports gear, software, pharmaceuticals, computer parts, you name it. You have a huge job trying to catch the people selling and importing this stuff to the U.S., some of it making its way into critical supply chains. How does it work? [/quote]international ban on rechargeable lithium battery shipments as cargo on passenger airlines.
it does not affect cargo flights. since 99.9% of li ions are shipped on cargo planes, not in a laggage on a passenger flight, i doubt we’ll have shortage, or price hike.
This is not about batteries in “luggage” — look at the Yahoo article linked at the top:
(I’d guess the latter is what eBay and Amazon and some China operations do — they collect all the packages meant to be shipped to a particular country, put them all in one shipment, and then break them out for delivery at the other end. Like this:
A while back I got 2 identical LEDs shipped from I forget, GB or BG, as replacements for ones that didn’t work.
One came with a label and US postage from a TMart address in New York — the label indicated it had been part of a big bundled shipment.
It went from China to New York in a bundle, then broken out and mailed to California
The other came direct from China to California, with a China label and postage. Both arrived the same day. The bundled shipment went an extra 6000 miles via New York with extra handling at TMart — in the same time the individual China Post package took to cross the Pacific.
That’s why the worry about these big boxes full of little packages — we’ve most of us seen how they package li-ions, often carelessly.
Look at the Yahoo story again. The US Congress has stonewalled this — for years — against calls by pilots and airlines and aircraft makers to protect passengers and passenger aircraft.
Cargo pilots will still be at risk.
Where did you get that 99% number? Afaik, passenger flights account for a decent percentage of air cargo
99.9% — I’d guess that’s from the perspective of someone inside the USA, because these cells originate
(so to get to the US they have to be shipped, and )
The restriction at issue is not about US regulation — it’s about a comparable international restriction on shipping these in passenger aircraft.
Stock up? Yeah, and make sure you store them properly.
And remember, if they vent — don’t inhale.
yea, i jumped the gun on 99,9 number, you are correct some cargo is shipped by passenger lines.
How about a business solution.
Have MFGs’ vertically integrate.
Thus only “approved” mfg can “sell” through their own distribution channel. = accoutability.
More work for them, (= new profit center) but it also puts the squeeze on low grade knock offs.
So if each (approved) distribution was owned by one one mfg then there would be accoutability.
Discuss
I hope that 30% is above the level where a cell gets damaged.
I think they should force the stores that ship batteries to pack them properly in battery plastic battery cases or those cardboard battery boxes that RMM ships small things in. Not loose in a Bag-O-Batteries like some of them do.
This is only a problem if you live in a place not easily serviced by cargo planes or cargo ships.
Bare batteries are still allowed on cargo planes and in your carry-on luggage. The effect should be minimal for the vast majority of people reading this.
Everyone stock up on 30Qs and HG2s!
There was a time when passenger flights accounted for a large portion of cargo lift. The problem is that changes after 9/11 made it impossible to ship most of that cargo on passenger aircraft. Couple that with the very high passenger load factors (which reduces the available freight lift), and to be blunt, Cargo has become a small part of the domestic passenger airline business. I refer you to the most recent Delta Airlines form 10Q SEC filing on www.delta.com. According to that filing, passenger revenue… $9.139 Billion, Cargo revenue $207 million. In other words cargo revenue was about 2% of passenger revenue and less than 2% of total revenue for the April-June 2015 quarter.
There was a time when many of major passenger airlines actually had Cargo only aircraft in the fleet. Those days are long past, and only a very small fraction of the total air cargo market is in the hands of the domestic airlines these days
Thanks for the heads up, I’m definitely getting in now before something changes, last time the batteries were stopped it was damn annoying.
Have placed an order for $100 worth of cells. That should tie me over for a little while.
That shouldn’t effect Sweden Post and their fleet of rickshaws, pack mules and donkey carts?
We are destined to always face this battery shipment issue huh…
That article is BS. That is investigators with no clue as to what happened (but still needing to give an answer) using a catch all to say batteries were suspected. The truth is that there are forensic tests that can show if batteries were the most probable culprit and even if so....I would bet more on a laptop with a cheap replacement battery as the probable cause.