Rethinking Lithium Battery Fire Risks

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Lithium-ion battery fires remain one of the most technically characterized and operationally relevant hazards in commercial aviation. As documented in U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Advisory Circular (AC) 120-80B, the industry has taken robust regulatory and operational steps to mitigate this hazard: Cabin crew are trained to identify early signs of thermal runaway, containment units are on board, and passengers are restricted from placing such items in checked baggage.

While the AC and guidance from the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) provide standardized procedures for managing lithium battery fires in flight, a number of aviation authorities and operators have begun to move beyond minimum regulatory compliance. 

As phones, tablets, laptops, e-cigarettes, and power banks — all powered by high-density cells — have become standard carry-on items, recent measures adopted across Asia, Europe, and North America have shown a growing institutional recognition of lithium-ion battery risks. The European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) released Safety Information Bulletin 2025-03, urging operators to strengthen passenger awareness campaigns, improve cabin crew training, and enhance screening procedures for battery-powered devices and spare cells. Some carriers have gone further, voluntarily introducing restrictions on device watt-hour thresholds, banning charging during flight, or limiting the number of devices carried per passenger. These initiatives — though not uniform — signal a shift toward more proactive, systemic approaches to onboard battery risk management.

However, despite these efforts, there remains a critical gap — not in equipment, procedures, or technical knowledge but in perception and integration. In most current operational settings, the passenger — the individual closest to the point of ignition — is not yet fully integrated into the safety equation.

Put simply, the people who bring the lithium batteries on board are best positioned to make sure those batteries are stored and handled safely—if the industry will only inform them.

This observation is not a criticism of the industry’s progress. On the contrary, aviation has made substantial strides toward adopting the principles of Safety-II, as formalized in ICAO Doc 9859. However, the operational treatment of passengers in the context of lithium battery risk continues to reflect a Safety-I mindset: Passengers are seen as potential hazards to be contained rather than as active contributors to resilience.

The Conceptual Shift

Safety-I, as defined by human factors expert James Reason, focuses on the prevention of adverse outcomes through prescriptive procedures, error control, and post-event analysis.¹ Under this model, passengers are expected to follow safety instructions but are not considered capable participants in the detection or mitigation of in-flight hazards.

In contrast to Safety-I, which seeks to reduce adverse outcomes by enforcing compliance and controlling variability, Safety-II defines safety as the ability to succeed under varying conditions.² It focuses on what goes right, emphasizing system flexibility, adaptability, and resilience. Building on this foundation, human factors professor Sidney Dekker expands the concept by reframing safety not as the absence of error but as the presence of adaptive capacity.³ Within this Safety-II frame, passengers — when adequately informed — are no longer seen merely as sources of risk to be constrained. Instead, they can act as active safety contributors, functioning as decentralized sensors capable of recognizing anomalies, alerting crew, and helping prevent escalation.

However, for this to occur, passengers must be consciously integrated into the safety ecosystem. This means going beyond passive messaging and adopting a more deliberate strategy of risk communication, especially regarding lithium battery behavior. Studies have shown that warning signs of thermal runaway, such as unusual heat, smoke, or noise, often occur before ignition. If a nearby passenger is trained — even minimally — to recognize and report these signs, valuable seconds can be gained.

A Persistent Safety-I Lens

Despite meaningful progress in safety management policies over the past two decades, a notable gap remains between formal compliance and the cultural realities of frontline operations. Many aviation organizations have formally adopted Safety-II principles, as reflected in internal programs and strategic documents. However, as Dekker emphasizes, organizational culture does not transform at the same pace as policy.⁴ While management may speak in the language of resilience and adaptability, the deeper behavioral logic of daily operations often reflects a legacy of Safety-I thinking.

This disconnect becomes evident in how passengers are framed in safety strategies related to lithium battery risk. Under a Safety-I approach, passengers are implicitly treated as uncontrolled variables — sources of potential noncompliance whose behavior must be constrained. The prevailing focus remains on containment: compliance-based warnings, procedural restrictions, and operational barriers. Nevertheless, this framing overlooks a key opportunity within the Safety-II paradigm, which sees variability not only as a source of risk but also as a potential resource for resilience.

Dekker expands on the original Safety-II concept by highlighting that people at the sharp end — crew, ground staff, and even passengers — can play a proactive role in maintaining safety, particularly in complex, time-sensitive situations.⁵ ICAO’s Doc 9859 reinforces this notion by stating that safety is emergent, arising from the dynamic interaction of system components under real-world conditions.

Nonetheless, this potential remains underutilized. The cultural lens through which passengers are viewed continues to be shaped by Safety-I assumptions: Risk must be minimized by controlling human behavior rather than supported by enabling informed human contribution. This framing contributes to systemic inertia — a kind of cultural lag — that slows the integration of Safety-II practices, not due to a lack of will or awareness but because of ingrained models of risk management that persist beneath formal surface-level change.

Local Rationality and the Passenger

The principle of local rationality is central to understanding passenger behavior. As Dekker argues, people make decisions that are locally sensible based on the information and cues available to them.⁶ If passengers are unaware of the thermal risks posed by their devices, or if their exposure to lithium battery safety information is limited to small print on a website, they are unlikely to act preemptively.

The UL Standards & Engagement 2024 survey of over 800 cabin crewmembers confirms this gap: Only 46 percent believe current messaging to passengers is effective.⁷ This reinforces the idea that, in practice, the passenger is still treated as an externality to the safety system — not as a barrier but as a variable to manage.

Toward Cultural Realignment

The lithium-ion battery threat does not emerge from negligence but from the complexity of modern air travel systems. Despite clear regulatory guidance, cultural implementation often lags, and safety practices drift from their intended design — a dynamic described by Dekker.⁸

Passengers may be unaware of what constitutes a fire risk, and even well-trained crewmembers can gradually normalize the absence of incidents as the norm. This shift, though subtle, erodes the operational vigilance required to manage battery-related hazards effectively.

Safety-II does not merely suggest that variability can be tolerated — it asserts that it is essential to success under real-world conditions. Passengers positioned at the very edge of the operational environment are not statistical outliers or compliance risks. They are latent assets whose proximity to emerging hazards gives them a unique role in sensing, reacting, and informing safety actions.

To continue excluding passengers from the safety architecture is to uphold a Safety-I worldview that reduces resilience to rule-following. However, resilience, as understood in Safety Science, is not compliance — it is adaptive capacity. A system that fails to recognize the passenger as part of this capacity is a system that remains incomplete.

Including the passenger as a safety asset is not a theoretical innovation — it is alignment with how safety emerges in complex systems. The next threat may not be mitigated by procedures alone. It will be mitigated by awareness, proximity, and the timely action of all system participants. In the cabin, resilience will only become real when the passenger is no longer outside the safety equation — but inside it.

Eduardo Froner is a Boeing 737 captain with over 15,000 flight hours. He also studies aviation safety at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

Notes

1. Reason, J. (1997). “Managing the Risks of Organizational Accidents.” Ashgate.
2. Hollnagel, E. (2014). “Safety-l and Safety-Il: The Past and Future of Safety Management.” Ashgate.
3. Dekker, S. (2014). “The Field Guide to Understanding Human Error” (3rd ed.). CRC Press.
4. Ibid.
5. Dekker, S. (2011). “Drift into Failure: From Hunting Broken Components to Understanding Complex Systems.” Ashgate.
6. Dekker, S. (2014).
7. UL Standards & Engagement. (2024) “Empowering Cabin Crew, Educating Passengers: Lithium Battery Safety in Commercial Aviation.”
8. Dekker, S. (2011).