Over the past few weeks, I’ve flown Ryanair, Aer Lingus and Lufthansa. All three providers have updated its pre-flight safety briefing. No longer can you store your power bank in the overhead locker. In fact some go further now stating you can’t use a power bank in flight at all. This is a specific problem for anyone flying Ryanair given none of their aircraft offer charging.
So what are the new rules, and why does that mean you should make sure your phone is fully charged before you take off?
What each airline actually allows now
Ryanair keeps to two power banks per passenger, none of them in the overhead locker, none of them over 100 watt-hours, and no recharging the power bank itself once you’re on board. What it still permits, per Ryanair’s own permitted items guidance, is using the power bank to charge your phone or tablet during the flight, aside from taxi, take-off and landing.
Aer Lingus allows the same two power banks in cabin baggage, again nowhere near the overhead locker, but draws the line further back. No charging a device from the power bank at any point in the flight, and no charging the power bank itself either.
Lufthansa Group, which covers Lufthansa itself along with Swiss, Austrian Airlines and Brussels Airlines, applies the strictest version of the three, confirmed on its own regulatory notice. Same two power bank limit, same overhead locker ban, and the same blanket ban on using or charging a power bank in the air that Aer Lingus has, in place since the middle of January.
The overhead locker point is the one that caught me out on the Aer Lingus leg, in Dusseldorf. I had to jump up and grab my bag, placing it under the seat in front of me.
The real problem isn’t Ryanair, it’s the airlines with no power at all
Thinking Ryanair would also ban usage outright, my first assumption was that Ryanair passengers would come off worst here, since none of Ryanair’s 737s have seat power to fall back on. Turns out Ryanair is the one airline of the three that still lets you use a power bank in flight, so its passengers are no worse off than before. It’s Aer Lingus and Lufthansa’s short-haul fleets, the ones running the same power-free A320 family jets as everyone else, that have banned power bank use on top of already having no seat power.
That’s where it gets personal for me. I travel with a ROG Ally, and it wouldn’t get through much more than an hour and a half of gaming without needing to be plugged in. On a Ryanair flight I can still top it up from a power bank mid-flight, even though the seat itself offers nothing. On a short-haul Aer Lingus or Lufthansa flight, with the exact same lack of seat power, that option is gone entirely. Once the battery’s spent, it’s spent, whatever’s in your bag. It’s a first world problem, I know that. But an airline banning the one workaround for a gap it has never bothered to fix is a bit rich.
This didn’t come from any one airline on its own
It’s part of a new global standard from the International Civil Aviation Organisation that came into force in March 2026, though there’s no single rule forcing every airline to implement it the same way, which is exactly why Ryanair’s version differs from the other two.
The Samsung Galaxy Note7 got itself banned from planes entirely back in 2016, ten years ago now, because its battery had a habit of catching fire. That was the moment the aviation industry got a very public, very embarrassing preview of exactly this risk, and it’s taken a decade, a pile of near misses, and at least one aircraft written off on the ground for a coordinated set of rules to turn up. Being totally transparent, I’m not annoyed the rules exist. I’m annoyed it took this long, and that none of the three have paired the ban with any commitment to add seat power where it’s missing.
What to actually do about it before you fly
Charge everything before you get to the gate, phone, tablet, handheld console, whatever you’re bringing, and know your power bank’s watt-hour rating before you pack it.
If you’re flying Ryanair, that charge stretches further than you’d think, since power bank use is still allowed once you’re airborne. If you’re flying Aer Lingus or Lufthansa short-haul, treat whatever charge you board with as the only charge you’re getting for the whole flight. Aer Lingus’s own guidance, on its restricted items page, allows power banks up to 100 watt-hours without any advance notice, with 100 to 160 watt-hours needing 48 hours’ notice beforehand, and Lufthansa and Ryanair both apply broadly the same thresholds.
