In hindsight, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) got it right in January. The aviation regulator had banned in-flight charging beginning that month after a power bank caught fire on a Delhi-Dimapur IndiGo flight in October 2025.
Power banks shall remain inside carry-on luggage and must not be placed in overhead compartments, the DGCA had directed.
That rule quickly became a talking point on May 5 when a power bank belonging to a passenger of IndiGo flight 6E-108, which was taxiing at the Chandigarh airport after landing from Hyderabad, caught fire.
The fire broke out in the cabin so the crew could reach it immediately. They used extinguishers to douse it. All 198 passengers and the six crew members evacuated within minutes.
Power banks have time and again proved to be risky business in flying. However, it is not lax regulation why these devices are allowed inside the aircraft cabin; rather it’s a conscious decision originating from an air disaster over Dubai in September 2010. In this mishap, lithium batteries in the cargo hold of a UPS Airlines freighter had caught fire, crashing the plane and killing both crew members.
Fire investigators had pinpointed the cause to be the thermal runaway of lithium batteries—a self-propagating reaction in which cells that overheat ignite surrounding ones in a feedback loop. In response, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) expanded restrictions on carriage of loose lithium batteries in cargo holds.
A fire in the cargo hold is deadly and uncontrollable whereas a similar situation in the cabin can be detected and suppressed. Therefore, power banks are mandated to be carried with passengers.
07/05/2026 Avishek G. Dastidar/India Today
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