Thousands of holidaymakers across south Wales will be jetting off over the coming weeks — and the aviation regulator has a simple warning before you zip up your case.
Keep your batteries out of the hold.
The UK Civil Aviation Authority says rechargeable lithium batteries — the kind found in power banks, vapes, phones and laptops — should always travel in the cabin with you, never in checked baggage.
The reason is fire. If one of these batteries overheats or fails in the hold, a blaze can take hold where no one is able to reach it.
In the cabin, crew are trained to spot and tackle a battery fire quickly. Buried in a suitcase in the hold, it could burn unchecked.
The regulator says the risk is rising fast. Reports of passenger devices overheating or malfunctioning on planes nearly doubled between 2024 and 2025.
Cases of battery-powered devices being wrongly packed in checked baggage rose by 91% last year, and incidents are now happening at a rate of around two a week.
The CAA says lithium batteries are now the single biggest safety risk to aircraft.
It’s easy to see why the numbers are climbing. The average traveller now packs four different lithium-powered devices — meaning a busy jet can be carrying more than 2,000 of them at once.
Yet awareness remains low. More than a third of travellers (36%) don’t know the dangers of packing batteries in the hold, even though most of us fly with a phone, and around half take a laptop or a power bank.
The advice boils down to three simple steps.
Take items like mobile phones, vapes and power banks on board with you, rather than packing them in the hold.
Turn laptops off completely — not just to sleep mode — if they do go in your checked bags.
And never charge a power bank during a flight.
Power banks and vapes are among the highest-risk items, so they must always come into the cabin. You’re not allowed to fly with more than two power banks.
You can sometimes charge other devices from a power bank on board, but rules vary, so check with your airline first or ask the cabin crew.
Giancarlo Buono, the CAA’s director of aviation safety, said flying remained by far the safest way to travel — and the aim was to keep it that way.
He said the message was simple: don’t put batteries in a checked bag, and take them into the cabin instead.
He added that the tip would make flights safer for everyone on board.
Getting it wrong can cause headaches before you’ve even taken off, too. Bags found to contain wrongly packed batteries can be pulled from the flight, causing significant delays.
More guidance is available on the CAA’s website at caa.co.uk/packright.
If you’re still sorting your case, our guide to saving space and avoiding baggage fees might help — and there’s more on what’s been done to protect summer flights from disruption this year.
