Lithium Battery Carry-On Rules: What a Hand-Carry Courier Can Fly With

Which lithium batteries can a courier carry in the cabin?

Almost everything that gets hand-carried in a hurry has a battery in it somewhere. A pre-production handset. A surgical navigation console going to a theatre list on Thursday. A drone or eVTOL flight-test pack that has to reach a range slot. A vector network analyser, a portable spectrometer, a set of camera bodies for a shoot that starts in eleven hours. Semiconductor metrology tools ship with backup cells inside the controller. Even a plain engineering laptop carrying the only copy of a validated build is, for regulatory purposes, a lithium-ion device.

That matters because an on-board courier is a passenger. The consignment travels as accompanied baggage under the passenger provisions of the ICAO Technical Instructions and the IATA Dangerous Goods Regulations, not under the cargo packing instructions. Those two regimes treat cells very differently, and the passenger regime is in some respects tighter: certain items simply cannot travel that way at any price, however urgent the requirement.

The practical consequence is that battery configuration is the first question our desk asks, before route, before visa, before whether we can make the connection in Frankfurt. If a customer tells us the box weighs four kilos and needs to be in Munich tomorrow, we can usually answer within minutes. If they tell us it contains a 220 Wh custom pack, the answer changes shape entirely and we start talking about a different service. Our process overview explains where this check sits in the booking sequence, and our service pages set out which options remain when the cabin is closed to a particular item.

Four configurations and two chemistries

Regulators do not think in terms of products. They think in terms of how a cell is presented for carriage, and there are four presentations that matter to a courier.

• Cells contained in equipment. The battery is installed in the device that uses it: a laptop, a handheld analyser, a medical monitor. This is the most permissive configuration.
• Cells packed with equipment. A spare pack travelling alongside the device it powers, in the same case.
• Loose or spare cells. Batteries with no host device present. This is where the tightest passenger conditions apply.
• Power banks. Treated as spare batteries in their own right, and since the most recent revisions they carry additional operational conditions of their own.

Cutting across those four is chemistry. Lithium-ion cells are rechargeable and are rated in watt-hours (Wh). Lithium-metal cells are primary, non-rechargeable, and are rated by lithium content in grams. The two are governed by different numbers and are not interchangeable in any conversation with a gate agent. Coin cells in a calibration instrument, long-life clock backups on a controller board and certain military or medical primaries are all lithium-metal, and shippers frequently overlook them because they are small and soldered down.

In the cargo world these presentations map onto UN numbers. UN3480 is lithium-ion cells and batteries shipped by themselves; UN3481 is lithium-ion contained in equipment or packed with equipment. UN3090 is lithium-metal shipped alone; UN3091 is lithium-metal in or packed with equipment. Those numbers do not appear on a passenger’s baggage tag, but they are the vocabulary your freight forwarder will use, and knowing which one your goods fall under tells you a great deal about the alternative if the cabin route closes.

Watt-hours: the arithmetic that settles most arguments

A surprising number of disputes at check-in come down to nobody having done a two-line calculation. Watt-hours are energy: voltage multiplied by amp-hours. Most consumer and industrial packs are marked in milliamp-hours instead, so the conversion the FAA sets out is to divide milliamp-hours by 1,000 to reach amp-hours, then multiply by the nominal voltage.

Worked example. A drone flight pack is marked 5,200 mAh, 22.2 V. Divide 5,200 by 1,000 to get 5.2 Ah. Multiply 5.2 by 22.2 and you get 115.44 Wh. That pack is above 100 Wh, so it is not a routine cabin item: it sits in the band that requires the operating carrier’s approval before departure, and that approval has to be obtained in advance, not improvised at the desk.

Two traps recur. The first is using the charger’s output voltage rather than the pack’s nominal voltage; a 4S lithium-polymer pack is nominally 14.8 V even though it charges to 16.8 V, and using the higher figure inflates the result. The second is aggregation. A pack made of several modules is rated on the whole assembly if the modules are wired together as one battery, so a set of four 30 Wh modules in a common housing is a 120 Wh battery, not four small ones. Where the modules are genuinely separable and shipped separately, they are separate batteries, but that has to be true physically, not just on the purchase order.

If the marking is illegible or absent, assume the answer is no. Carriers are entitled to refuse anything they cannot verify by reading the cell, and an unmarked pack is the single most common cause of a shipment being turned back at the gate.

The thresholds, and where approval becomes the gating item

The figures below are the IATA and ICAO passenger provisions as published for 2026. They are the baseline. Individual airlines and individual states may and frequently do impose stricter conditions, so treat them as the ceiling rather than the entitlement.

Lithium-ion

• Up to 100 Wh per battery: permitted in carry-on baggage in devices and as spares, without operator approval.
• Above 100 Wh and up to 160 Wh: permitted only with the approval of the operating carrier. This is the band that catches professional camera packs, larger drone packs and some portable medical and test equipment.
• Above 160 Wh: not accepted as passenger baggage at all. These have to move as declared cargo under the Dangerous Goods Regulations.

Lithium-metal

• Up to 2 g of lithium content per battery: permitted in carry-on baggage.
• Above 2 g and up to 8 g: restricted to portable medical electronic devices and requires operator approval.
• Above 8 g: not permitted for passenger carriage.

Quantities per person

The limits are per passenger, not per package. Current guidance sets a maximum of 20 spare batteries of any type per person and a maximum of 15 portable electronic devices per person, with the operator able to approve more in either case. Power banks are capped at two per person. Where multiple spares are carried, an operator may require additional separation between them or a low state of charge, commonly given as under 25 per cent.

Note also that the provision allowing power banks in the 100 to 160 Wh band with approval is not being carried into the 68th edition of the DGR, which takes effect on 1 January 2027. If you build a recurring lane around large power banks, plan for that now.

How do you get airline approval for a 100 to 160 Wh battery?

In writing, in advance, and from the operating carrier rather than the booking agent. The request names the flight, the passenger, the device and the battery, gives the rating in watt-hours as marked on the cell, and attaches the UN 38.3 test summary and a photograph of the marking. Battery suppliers' guidance suggests allowing three to seven days for an answer, and the honest planning assumption is the longer end. IATA's passenger guidance limits a passenger to two batteries in the 100 to 160 Wh band, so a set of four professional camera packs is two couriers' worth or a cabin-plus-cargo split, not one seat. The approval, once granted, has to be referenced on the booking so the check-in agent can see it, and the courier carries a printed copy because the agent at a night departure will not have time to search an inbox. A portable medical device in the 2 to 8 g lithium-metal band follows the same route, and the medical courier page covers the rest of that file.

Two practical points. The approval is for a specific flight on a specific carrier, so a re-route after a cancellation is a new request, which is why the desk asks for approval on the primary and on the fallback sector at the same time when the deadline is tight; it matters most on the two-sector itineraries through Frankfurt or Munich that serve Germany. And an approval for a battery does not extend to a power bank of the same rating: several carriers, Emirates among them, now cap power banks at 100 Wh outright, and the 68th edition of the DGR withdraws the approval route for power banks above 100 Wh from January 2027. If the pack is the product, ship it as a battery; if it is a power bank, keep it under 100 Wh.

What is prohibited outright

Some things have no approval route, and it is worth being blunt about them because customers occasionally ask us to try anyway.

Damaged, defective or recalled cells. Batteries and battery-powered devices that are likely to produce sparks or a dangerous evolution of heat must not be carried aboard an aircraft. That covers swollen, punctured, dented, leaking, previously overheated and subject-to-recall units. This is the rule that most often blocks a genuine engineering need, because the thing an engineer most wants flown urgently is frequently the pack that failed. A returned field unit with a suspect cell is not a hand-carry candidate; it is a specialist damaged-cell shipment with its own packaging regime and, in practice, a ground or dedicated freight solution.

Spare cells in the hold. Loose batteries and power banks travel in the cabin only. They may not go in checked baggage under any circumstances, and if a cabin bag is taken at the gate for stowage in the hold, the spares must be removed and kept with the passenger. For an on-board courier this is a design principle rather than an inconvenience: our consignments stay in the cabin, in the courier’s possession, which is the whole point of the service.

Anything above the ceilings. Lithium-ion above 160 Wh and lithium-metal above 8 g are outside the passenger regime entirely. There is no supervisor who can wave them through. Our prohibited items page lists the wider set of goods we cannot accept, and our guide to what can travel as hand-carry covers the non-battery restrictions that sit alongside these.

Terminal protection and packing that survives inspection

Every spare cell must be individually protected against short circuit. The accepted methods are unglamorous and all of them work: leave the battery in its unopened retail packaging, tape over the exposed terminals, use a purpose-made battery case or sleeve, or place each cell in its own plastic bag. What is not acceptable is a handful of loose packs rolling around in a rucksack pocket with keys and coins.

Beyond the letter of the rule, there is the question of what a security officer or gate agent sees when the case is opened, and that is a separate discipline. A consignment that reads as deliberate gets waved through; one that reads as improvised gets questions. In practice that means:

• Each cell individually bagged or taped, with the Wh or gram marking left visible through the bag rather than covered by tape.
• Cells laid flat in a single layer where possible, not stacked against each other under compression.
• Devices switched fully off, not left in sleep or standby, and protected against accidental activation.
• A printed inventory on top of the contents listing each item, its chemistry and its rating, so the courier can answer without unpacking.
• Nothing conductive loose in the same compartment.

State of charge is worth managing even where it is not formally required. Shipping spares at a low state of charge reduces the stored energy in the case, and where an operator does impose a limit it is usually the sub-25 per cent figure. Ask the shipper to discharge rather than top up before handover; the instinct to send a fully charged pack so it is ready on arrival is understandable and unhelpful.

Documentation: what the courier carries, what the shipper provides

Under the passenger provisions there is no dangerous goods declaration, no shipper’s declaration and no DG training certificate to present. That is precisely what makes the route fast. But the absence of formal DG paperwork does not mean the absence of paperwork, and the file we build for a battery-bearing assignment normally contains the following.

• An itemised packing list naming each device and cell, chemistry, nominal voltage, capacity and calculated watt-hours or lithium content.
• Photographs of the battery markings, taken before the case is sealed, so a rating can be evidenced without opening anything at the desk.
• Written operator approval where any item falls in the 100 to 160 Wh band or the 2 to 8 g medical band, obtained from the operating carrier before ticketing.
• The commercial invoice and any customs paperwork, which is a separate matter from air safety but travels in the same wallet. Our note on hand-carry and customs covers that side.
• A UN 38.3 test summary where one is relevant.

Where the UN 38.3 test summary matters

UN 38.3 is the design-qualification test series every lithium cell type must pass before it can be transported. Manufacturers are required to make a test summary available, and it is a cargo document rather than a passenger one: nobody at a boarding gate will ask for it. It becomes load-bearing in two situations that regularly affect our customers. The first is customs and import control: several authorities ask for evidence of battery type approval when a consignment is presented for clearance, particularly for prototypes with no model history. The second is the fallback plan. If the cabin route is refused or the item turns out to exceed the ceilings, the same goods have to be re-presented as declared cargo, and the test summary is required at that point. Asking the shipper for it up front costs nothing and saves a day when it is needed.

How a refusal actually happens

Refusals are rarely a matter of someone quoting a regulation. They come from a sequence of small frictions, and knowing the sequence is how you avoid it.

The first pinch point is the check-in or bag-drop desk, where the courier declares what is in the case. If a large pack is present and there is no approval reference on the booking, the agent has no mechanism to create one on the spot and the item comes out. The second is the security checkpoint, where an X-ray image of dense cells prompts a hand search. Here the failure mode is usually presentation: untaped terminals, an unmarked pack, or a courier who cannot immediately say what the item is. The third is the boarding gate, where cabin bags are being taken for stowage in the hold because the aircraft is full. A courier who has to explain why this particular bag cannot go below is having that conversation at the worst possible moment.

Everything that prevents these is done days earlier. Ratings confirmed and calculated from the markings, not from a datasheet. Approvals in writing against the ticket. A case that opens flat and reads clearly. A courier briefed on exactly what is inside, so the answer is immediate and specific rather than a shrug and an offer to look. And a cabin bag sized and presented so it is never a candidate for gate stowage in the first place.

Where a refusal does happen, the recovery is a re-route or a re-presentation, and speed depends on having thought about it in advance. Our route pages show where alternative same-day connections exist, which is usually the difference between losing four hours and losing a day.

Airline and state variation, and why we check per assignment

The IATA and ICAO figures are a floor on which two further layers sit. States may impose additional restrictions on operators registered with them or on aircraft in their airspace, and individual airlines set their own conditions in their operations manuals. Both layers move, and they have moved noticeably in the recent power bank revisions.

Those revisions are a good illustration. Current guidance is that power banks must not be recharged from an in-aircraft power supply, should not be stored in overhead lockers, and should not be used to power other devices during taxi, take-off or landing. Several carriers went further ahead of the guidance, requiring power banks to be kept visible at the seat or banning their use in flight entirely. If you booked to a rule you read last year, you may be wrong this year.

This is why our desk verifies against the operating carrier for each assignment rather than working from a general table. The operating carrier is the one that matters, and it is not always the one on the ticket: a codeshare booked with one airline may be flown by another with different conditions, and a two-sector itinerary may involve two different sets of rules with the tighter one governing the whole journey. Our airline reference is a starting point, but the check is done live against the specific flight before we commit to a departure.

Nothing in this article is a compliance determination for your goods. It is general guidance; the operating carrier and the relevant regulator decide what may be carried, and their decision on the day governs.

What do Emirates, Etihad and Qatar Airways say about power banks?

The Gulf carriers moved ahead of the guidance in 2025, and because most of an OBC desk's departures from the UAE leave through Dubai International (DXB), Abu Dhabi (AUH), Sharjah (SHJ) or Doha (DOH), their rules are the ones a courier meets first. Emirates announced that from 1 October 2025 the use of any power bank on board is prohibited: a passenger may carry one power bank of no more than 100 Wh in cabin baggage, it must be switched off, it may not be charged from the seat power or used to charge a device in flight, it should be kept at the seat rather than in the overhead locker, and power banks are not permitted in checked baggage at all, according to the airline's own announcement and reporting in The National. Etihad likewise prohibits using or charging a power bank on board, allows power banks and spare batteries in hand baggage only, protected against short circuit, and applies the 160 Wh ceiling to what may be carried. Qatar Airways forbids stowing charging units in the overhead bins or burying them deep in packed bags, and Gulf News reported flydubai and Air Arabia applying the same family of rules. Above the carriers sits the state regulator, the General Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) in the UAE, and Dubai Airports has published its own passenger checklist for power banks, which is worth reading before a winter departure.

For a courier the operational consequence is simple: a power bank is a personal item, not a consignment. The desk asks couriers to carry at most one, under 100 Wh, switched off and at hand, and never to let a client's consignment be confused with it at the security belt. Where the consignment itself is a power bank, it is booked as a battery shipment with the rating declared, and the per-carrier limits above decide whether it flies in the cabin or goes as declared cargo. Our UAE airports and airlines guide and the Dubai courier service page keep the local picture current, and the Doha desk page covers the Qatar Airways side.

Hand-carry versus declared dangerous goods air cargo

It helps to be clear about what each route actually buys, because they are not competing versions of the same thing.

Declared cargo has more headroom and less speed. Cells shipped by themselves (UN3480 for lithium-ion, UN3090 for lithium-metal) are forbidden as cargo on passenger aircraft altogether and must move on a freighter, which immediately constrains you to freighter schedules and freighter routings. Section II, the lighter regime that avoids a full dangerous goods declaration, was removed from the standalone battery packing instructions in 2022; it survives only for batteries contained in or packed with equipment, under UN3481 and UN3091, and then only below the small-cell thresholds of 20 Wh per cell and 100 Wh per battery for lithium-ion, or 1 g per cell and 2 g per battery for lithium-metal. There is also a state-of-charge condition on standalone lithium-ion, which from 1 January 2026 must be offered at no more than 30 per cent of rated capacity unless approved otherwise. All of this is manageable, but it involves certified packaging, trained shippers, declarations and a booking process measured in days.

Hand-carry buys speed and custody at the price of headroom. There is no declaration, no UN-specification packaging and no freighter dependency: the consignment moves on the next passenger flight with a named person beside it. What you give up is the upper end of the energy range, and you accept per-passenger quantity caps that make large repeat volumes impractical. The two routes are complements: cabin for the small, urgent, high-consequence item, declared cargo for the pack that is too big or too numerous. Our sector pages show how the split tends to fall in practice, and the sector guides on semiconductor hand-carry and medical and pharmaceutical cold chain cover the additional constraints those goods bring with them.

What are PI 965 to PI 970, and when does a courier need them?

The packing instructions are the cargo vocabulary, and a courier needs them for exactly one reason: the fallback. When a consignment cannot go in the cabin, it goes as declared cargo under one of six packing instructions in the IATA DGR, which is itself derived from the ICAO Technical Instructions, Doc 9284, and knowing which one tells the desk how long the alternative will take. PI 965 covers lithium-ion cells and batteries shipped on their own (UN3480), PI 966 lithium-ion packed with equipment and PI 967 lithium-ion contained in equipment (both UN3481). PI 968 covers lithium-metal on its own (UN3090), PI 969 lithium-metal packed with equipment and PI 970 lithium-metal contained in equipment (both UN3091). Each instruction is divided into sections: Section IA and Section IB for larger cells or greater quantities, which need a shipper's declaration, the Class 9 lithium battery hazard label and, for standalone batteries, the Cargo Aircraft Only label; and Section II, the lighter regime for small cells and batteries in or with equipment, which still requires the lithium battery mark on the package and, under PI 966 and PI 969, a package that passes a 1.2 metre drop test and holds no more batteries than the equipment needs plus two spare sets.

The state of charge rule has widened. Standalone lithium-ion under PI 965 is offered at no more than 30 per cent of rated capacity, and from 1 January 2026 the 67th edition of the DGR extends the same 30 per cent limit to lithium-ion cells and batteries above 2.7 Wh packed with equipment under PI 966; shipping them at a higher charge needs written approval from the authorities of both the state of origin and the state of the operator, and then only on a freighter. The same edition brought sodium-ion batteries into the regulations under their own UN numbers, UN3551 for batteries shipped alone and UN3552 for those in or with equipment, with the 30 per cent state of charge applied to the standalone entry. If a prototype pack is sodium-ion rather than lithium-ion, say so in the first message, because the passenger provisions are written around lithium and the carrier will want to know.

What all this means for the shipper who called about a hand-carry is a question of days. A consignment that misses the cabin thresholds needs UN-specification packaging, the lithium battery mark and labels, a trained shipper to sign the declaration, a carrier that accepts the class and, for standalone cells, a freighter schedule; the booking is measured in days rather than hours, which is the gap the cabin route exists to close with the next flight out and a named person beside the case. The AOG courier page shows the same trade-off for aircraft parts, where a battery-bearing component is often the item that grounds the aircraft, and what a grounded aircraft costs puts a number on the delay.

What to tell us when you call

A battery-bearing booking moves fastest when the first message contains the right five facts. In order of usefulness: the chemistry of every cell, lithium-ion or lithium-metal; the rating of each, in watt-hours or grams of lithium content, read off the cell rather than from a catalogue; whether each cell is installed in equipment, packed alongside it, or loose; how many of each there are; and whether any unit is a returned, suspect or previously failed item.

That last question is the one customers most often answer late, and it is the one most likely to change the answer entirely. A functioning prototype and a warranty return that got hot in the field look identical in a photograph and are treated completely differently in the regulations.

With those five facts we can normally tell you within the hour whether the consignment flies as accompanied baggage, whether it needs an operator approval and how long that will take to obtain, or whether it belongs in declared cargo instead. Where the answer is the third of those, we will say so plainly rather than putting a courier on a flight to find out at the desk. The failure mode we work hardest to avoid is not a refused booking; it is a courier standing at a gate at two in the morning with a case that was never going to travel.

Related reading: what an on board courier is, how much an on board courier costs, and the glossary for the terms used here.