Batteries will be harder to get after April 1?

[Mike]

Got this email from Ready Made RC the other day. A lot of people are confused by this law because it says "passenger aircraft". RMRC sells their own branded batteries and are concerned with shipping them though. My understanding of a "passenger aircraft" is an aircraft designed to transport passengers (think airline), vs. one designed to carry cargo specifically.

Several changes are going into effect on April 1st, 2016 regarding how Lithium Polymer batteries may be shipped via air. First, all international shipments of lithium batteries not in or with equipment (batteries by themselves) are prohibited as cargo on passenger aircraft. This means there are now over 100 countries to where we will not be able to ship batteries. Second, a 30% state of charge limit will be placed on batteries that will be traveling via air. We believe this is not only unsafe as the battery is not stable at 30% charge, but long periods at this charge dramatically increases the chance that a cell will go bad.

Here is more on the changes that will go into affect:

http://www.iata.org/whatwedo/cargo/dgr/Documents/lithium-battery-update.pdf

 

[RENOV8R]

You mean wr may have to do it old school and actually start supporting our local hobby shops??? The horror!!

 

[holtneil]

Hobby king batteries come by sea , if you live where there are no freight planes coming in your be stuffed as sea will be the only way to get them to where you live , even in the UK where Hobby King have a warehouse the box that the battery ships to me in has a warning that it has a lipo inside and if the box is damaged that the post office should return it and not deliver to me , ALL this is going to push up the price of lipos to some remote places