Monday, January 7, 2008

BUHAY AMERICA TIP:
Airline Restrictions on Spare Batteries

Travel Alert!
Effective January 1, 2008, the U.S. Department of Transportation have prohibited loose lithium batteries in checked baggage.

In response to exploding laptops incidents, the government agency has issued this directive.

Eto ang mga detalye:
1.) Iba ang treatment sa mga installed batteries na nakakabit na (sa telepono, computer, camera, etc.), at sa spare batteries (carried loose). Only lithium-based batteries are affected, not nickel-based rechargeables or alkaline batteries.

2.) You can't pack spare batteries in checked baggage but equipment with batteries installed can be checked in.

3.) Sa carry-on bag mo, you can take as many batteries as you want (installed or spare), basta hindi lalampas sa 8 grams of lithium content each battery. How much lithium is in a battery? This informative article from Yahoo! tells you how to figure it out:
"An 8-gram battery equals about 100 watt-hours of power. Now, your battery won't say how many watt-hours it provides, but it's easy to do the math. Look on the bottom and you'll find a voltage rating and a mAh (milliamp-hours) rating. Multiply these two together and divide by 1,000. That's your watt-hours. In the (big) battery I'm looking at as an example, it offers 11.1 volts and 7,800 mAh. Multiply and divide by 1,000 and you get 86.58 watt-hours, acceptable under the new rules."

Since most travelers don't typically carry these big batteries, not a lot of people are affected by this restriction. But if you carry them, check out FAA's safety tips.

For more details, here's the link to the DOT website.

[Photo: US-DOT website]

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