The New Power Bank Rules Since 27 March 2026: What ICAO Actually Requires

The governing document is Doc 9284-AN/905, Technical Instructions, 2025–2026 Edition, Addendum No. 1, dated 27/3/26. Its cover page states plainly: "is applicable from 27 March 2026."

The addendum gives power banks their own entry in Table 8-1; until then they rode along under "spare batteries". Five provisions sit in it, and they do not carry equal weight:

Power banks remain banned from checked baggage — not new in 2026, that was already in the table.

A compact unit like the INIU Ultra Mini Powerbank 10.000 mAh, 45 W sits at roughly 36 Wh, well clear of any approval question — though its small capacity changes nothing about the two-unit cap or the carry-on-only rule.

Germany's Luftfahrt-Bundesamt publishes the German text of the same table, explicitly marked as Ausgabe 2025-2026 ADDENDUM NO. 1. The two decisive lines sit directly beneath one another:

— dürfen an Bord des Flugzeugs nicht aufgeladen werden;
— sollten an Bord des Flugzeugs nicht zum Aufladen eines tragbaren elektronischen Geräts verwendet werden;

"Must not" and "should not" are not a stylistic variation in dangerous goods law. In ICAO's Technical Instructions must marks a requirement and should a recommendation, and the German translation reproduces that split exactly.

In practice: recharging the power bank from an aircraft socket is globally prohibited since 27 March 2026. Charging your phone from it is not — unless your airline wrote stricter rules of its own. Several have.

IATA's own guidance for operators dated 31/03/2026 lists only three changes: "separate out power banks from spare batteries", "limit passengers (and crew) to two power banks for personal use" and "prohibit passengers recharging the power bank in flight". A ban on use does not appear in that list.

Charge your phone from something like the Anker Zolo Powerbank 20.000 mAh, 45 W Max and, under ICAO's own wording, you are breaking a recommendation, not a rule — your airline is free to make it a rule anyway.

How it got here

Europe's regulator moved earlier and went further. EASA's Safety Information Bulletin 2025-03, issued 27 May 2025, recommended operators impose a "prohibition of use power banks to charge electronic devices during the flight" — on a document whose every page reads "This is information only. Recommendations are not mandatory."

So EASA recommended a use ban in May 2025 that ICAO, ten months later, adopted only as a recommendation. The same bulletin still classed power banks with spare batteries: "Power banks are not PEDs - they are spare batteries." That classification is precisely what the March 2026 addendum undid.

Here it gets messy, and the mess sits inside one document. Three sources describing the same addendum say three different things about power banks between 100 Wh and 160 Wh:

IATA explains the contradiction in its own body text, and it is the most important sentence in the document: "The addendum provides for passengers to carry power banks of 100-160 Wh with the approval of the operator; however, given the concerns with regulatory oversight of power bank manufacturers and the limitation to 100Wh of power banks for crew in the performance of their operational duties, this provision will not be carried into the 68th edition of the DGRs."

Put plainly: ICAO permits it, IATA thinks that is wrong and is deleting it from the next edition of its own rulebook. The same page records that the guidance "will not be effective beyond 31 December 2026" and that the 68th edition of the Dangerous Goods Regulations enters into force on 1 January 2027.

What to take from that: a power bank above 100 Wh is a negotiation, not an entitlement. The legal instrument allows it with airline consent; the table ground staff work from lists it as forbidden. Buy in that band today and you buy a device that loses its basis in the IATA rules on 1 January 2027 — see our piece on the 160 Wh exception disappearing.

Above 160 Wh there is no ambiguity. IATA's table states such batteries must be "prepared and transported as cargo in accordance with the IATA Dangerous Goods Regulations". They are not permissible as passenger baggage in any form.

Crew face a tighter limit

The addendum's new paragraph 2.2.2 requires that power banks an airline brings on board for its crew "not exceed a Watt-hour rating of 100 Wh". There is no 160 Wh option for crew equipment at all, and IATA cites exactly that mismatch as one of its reasons for scrapping the passenger allowance.

ICAO's announcement of 27 March 2026 confirms crew may continue to carry and use power banks in line with the aircraft's operational requirements. So if you see someone using one in flight, that is not the rule being broken.

A unit like the Anker Laptop Powerbank 25.000 mAh, 165 W, which the manufacturer itself rates at 90 Wh, is unaffected by that crew ceiling: as passenger baggage it sits comfortably inside the 100 Wh line.

The ICAO text is a floor, not a finished answer. Airlines may be stricter, and several already were before 27 March 2026 — this rule travelled upward from national regulators and carriers, not down from ICAO. An addendum is also not yet national law: IATA notes enforceability depends on each state, "for some States, it is immediate; some require a short administrative period, and some will require public notification and legislative amendment." In practice, your airline's rule is the one enforced at the gate.

⚠️ About the Lufthansa row, stated openly: the airline's own pages at business.lufthansagroup.com and eurowings.com block automated retrieval and returned HTTP 403 on every attempt. We have not read those pages ourselves. The entries above rest on trade press and consumer organisations that report the 15 January 2026 date consistently — among them infranken.de and the ADAC. The Lufthansa Group's own notice is published under the title "Powerbanks an Bord: aktualisierte Regelungen ab dem 15. Januar 2026" at business.lufthansagroup.com. Open it in a browser and check it before you fly.

A use ban at Condor circulates widely but could not be substantiated; only carriage limits are confirmed there. No reliable primary source could be reached for Singapore Airlines, Ryanair or easyJet, so they are absent. A figure we could not verify is one we would rather not print.

The two-unit cap counts each device on its own — two of the Anker Powerbank, 20.000mAh tragbares Ladegerät mit integriertem USB-C-Kabel, 87W Max Schnellladung, kompatibel mit MacBook, iPhone, Samsung und mehr, each around 72 Wh by our calculation, is already the maximum the Lufthansa Group or Emirates will let through.

The CAAC rule is the only one here that depends on a property of the device rather than on your behaviour. It requires Chinese CCC certification, a printed conformity mark that a power bank bought in Europe usually does not carry.

The scope is what matters: CAAC applies it to domestic flights. A Frankfurt–Shanghai sector is unaffected; the onward Shanghai–Xi'an sector is not. Check only the rules of the airline you leave Europe with, and you miss precisely the leg where the device gets confiscated.

A claim has circulated since early 2026 that lithium batteries may only travel charged to 30 %. That requirement sits in the 67th edition of the IATA Dangerous Goods Regulations and binds air cargo shippers. It does not apply to your hand luggage.

State of charge does appear on the passenger side, but far more weakly: IATA records that an airline may, as a safety measure, require multiple spare batteries to be separated or carried at a low state of charge — "(<25% indicated charge when inserted into the device)". That is an operator option in approval cases, not a general obligation, and not a 30 % limit.

Cargo and passenger rules live in separate parts of the same rulebook, and mixing them is the most common error in this subject.

The rule is written in watt-hours. Retail sells in milliamp-hours. That gap between regulation and purchase only surfaces at the gate.

We went through the Amazon.de listings for six common power banks to see whether they state capacity in watt-hours — the unit Table 8-1 is written in. Exactly one of six does. The Wh columns below are therefore not seller figures but our own conversion from the mAh number in the listing title.

The formula appears in none of the listings: Wh = mAh × cell voltage ÷ 1000. Cell voltage is the catch. Both 3.6 V and 3.7 V are common, and no listing title says which applies.

Every mAh value is a seller figure from the listing title, not a measured value. One ASIN can carry several variants — check the product page before buying. Prices move daily and sit on the product cards, not in this table.

Anker calculates at 3.6 V. The one seller publishing its own Wh figure gives exactly 90 Wh for 25,000 mAh, which is 25,000 × 3.6 ÷ 1000. At 3.7 V the same cell reads 92.5 Wh — one device, two numbers.

At 27,000 mAh the convention decides. 97.2 Wh or 99.9 Wh depending on the voltage assumed, so the margin shrinks from 2.8 Wh to 0.1 Wh. That is why the figure printed on the casing governs, not your arithmetic on a listing title.

All six stay under 100 Wh either way and need no airline approval — given the 100-to-160 Wh contradiction, the quieter option.

The tightest margin in our table belongs to the INIU Laptop Power Bank 27.000 mAh, 140 W: depending on which cell voltage you assume, it clears the 100 Wh line by as little as 0.1 Wh.

Read the watt-hours off the casing, don't derive them from a listing title. The rulebook works exclusively in Wh. How to convert safely is in our guide to converting mAh to Wh.

Two devices, no more. The two-unit limit is mandatory, not advisory, and counts per person.

Cabin bag, within reach. Lufthansa Group and Emirates additionally require the device stays out of the overhead bin.

Tape the terminals, or keep the retail packaging. Short-circuit protection is mandatory and does get checked at the gate.

Above 100 Wh, ask in writing beforehand. A verbal yes at the check-in desk will not help you much at the gate.

Check connecting flights separately. Domestic sectors in China and South Korea carry their own rules that your first operating carrier does not answer for.

Which limits apply at which airline is set out in our overview of power banks in hand luggage.

If you'd rather not think about it, something like the INIU Laptop Power Bank 25.000 mAh, 100 W stays comfortably under the limit at roughly 90 Wh calculated and needs no airline approval at all.

Since 27 March 2026: two power banks at most, cabin baggage only, protected against short circuits, and no recharging on board. Using one to charge your phone is a recommendation globally — though the Lufthansa Group and Emirates prohibit it anyway, being stricter than the floor.

The point that has barely reached the coverage is the 100-to-160 Wh contradiction: permitted in ICAO's text, "Forbidden" in IATA's table, and deleted on 1 January 2027 regardless. Buying that size today means buying an expiring entitlement.