Passengers on a five-hour EasyJet flight from the Red Sea resort of Hurghada in Egypt to London Luton were in for a nasty surprise earlier this week when they discovered that their plane was going to make a precautionary diversion to Rome, Italy, because one of their seatmates had left a power bank in their checked luggage.
In fact, it gets worse. The passenger not only admitted to leaving the power bank in the checked luggage but also confided in the cabin crew that the power bank was being used to actively charge another device.
There has been a lot of attention about the dangers of power banks on planes in the last year, although it’s worth noting that international regulators have banned passengers from packing power banks in their checked luggage for many years.
Power banks are powered by lithium-ion batteries, which can overheat and then catch fire in a process known as ‘thermal runaway.’ When a lithium battery does catch fire, it can be very difficult to extinguish the flames which can quickly spread to surrounding flammable material.
International aviation bodies like the International Air Transportation Association (IATA) and the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) have long forbidden passengers from packing power banks and other lithium battery-powered devices in their checked luggage.
Instead, devices with a lithium battery should always be carried in carry-on luggage because if they do overheat, it’s a lot easier to detect and then extinguish with special firefighting equipment that cabin crew are trained to use.
In contrast, the cargo hold of a commercial airliner has very limited fire suppression systems, and a fire could go undetected for some time. By the time a smoke alert sounds in the cockpit, the fire could already be raging, posing potentially catastrophic consequences.
It remains unclear what happened to make the passenger come forward and admit to the cabin crew that they had left their power bank in their checked luggage aboard EasyJet flight U2-2618 on May 19, but when the pilots heard the news, they knew they couldn’t just continue flying to London.
Nearly four hours into the flight, the pilots suddenly diverted off their intended route and headed straight towards Rome Fiumicino Airport, where it landed without incident.
Unfortunately, by this point, the pilots and cabin crew had reached their maximum legally permitted duty day and weren’t able to fly the rest of the way to London.
With EasyJet unable to find a replacement crew, the airline had little choice but to delay the flight overnight in Rome.
In a statement, a spokesperson for EasyJet sad the Captain took the “decision to divert as a precaution in line with safety regulations.”
The statement added: “The aircraft landed safely and passengers disembarked routinely and we provided hotel accommodation and meals where available.”
Under European airline passenger regulations, EasyJet was required to provide hotel accommodation to the delayed passengers even though the diversion wasn’t the airline’s fault.
The airline said some passengers decided to camp out at the airport overnight, and they were provided with refreshment vouchers.
It’s not just EasyJet that takes the threat of power bank fires so seriously that they will divert a flight. In March 2025, Air France diverted a packed Boeing 777 after a passenger reported losing their mobile phone somewhere around their seat during a flight from Paris Orly to Pointe-à-Pitre, in the French overseas territory of Guadeloupe.
The cabin crew searched in vain for the lost mobile phone, but when they couldn’t locate the device, the pilots decided that the only option was to return to Paris so that engineers could carry out a more detailed search.
