Photographe Paul Galipeau Ottawa Canada | lechampiondumonde.com

Flying with batteries

Announcements were made on January 1 that there were new rules on flying with wet-cell and lithium batteries. It all seemed a bit confusing to me but I guess they’ve been planning this for a while. How do I know? You would too if you always flew with a pair of these bad boys in your carry on.

Quantum Battery 1 (photo from Victor Grepo)

Nearly everytime I flew in 2007, I was held by security because of these things. Once, I was even questioned as to what they were…because apparently printing “BATTERY” on the top is an insufficient sign. The worst was at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv where they weren’t so interested in the batteries as they were in ALL electronics in my carry on, passing all major items individually through the x-ray (laptop, camera body, lenses).

Anyway, the whole thing has been riddled in confusion buy leave it to Rob Galbraith to clear things up for us.

The reality is that the changes most photographers will have to make when readying to fly are less onerous than the coverage might have led you to believe. … the main and perhaps only change we’ll need to make when preparing to fly is to consistently place spare camera and laptop Lithium-Ion packs into see-through, sealable bags, so as to not give airport screeners a reason to delay the passage of carry-ons through security.

All in all, as inconvenient as this seems, my hunch is that preventing the mass shipment of lithium on an airplane makes more sense than allowing the current war on liquid to reach the point where a guy chugged a litre of vodka instead of throwing it away. I mean, if single laptop batteries are liable to explode in my face, what could happen if I tried flying with a skid full of them?

So, TSA, Transport Canada and everyone else, I’ll put my batteries in plastic bags but please, tell me that you have plans to stop taking my orange juice away when I go through security. Can’t you just swab it to determine that it is the same orange juice that is available at the café on the other side?

Read Rob Galbraith’s article (it has good links too)

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