Air Travel Gets More Complicated

Just in time for CES, the DOT is limiting the size of lithium batteries you can take with you on a flight starting January 1. Most important, all batteries that are not in a device have to be in your carry-on luggage. (groan, my back!) Next, you can only bring batteries with up to 8-grams of lithium or 100 watt-hours, and up to two batteries with over 8 but not over 25 grams or 300 watt-hours of lithium. As for lithium metal batteries you can bring up to 2 grams per battery either installed in a device or as spares, but no more.

Hopefully the TSA knows more about batteries than I do because my go bag could power a small village and the giant batteries for my video camera neither say what type of battery it is nor how many grams of anything are in it. This is going to be a mess. For now, if you have a lot of big (probably expensive) spares you might want to travel with a folded self-addressed Fed Ex box with you or save the trouble and ship them ahead of time. As for total grammage of lithium, it looks like you're only limited by what your LOLpaca can carry/pull/roll and/or fit in an overhead and underseat stow area. The good news is that soon we'll be able to buy lots of cheap Lion batteries at auction.