ICAO to Prohibit Lithium Metal Battery Cargo on All Passenger Aircraft

In an important win for ALPA’s campaign to level the playing field between U.S. airlines and their foreign competitors, ICAO’s Dangerous Goods Panel (DGP) last week decided to revise existing cargo standards to prohibit the carriage of lithium metal batteries as cargo on all passenger aircraft with an effective date of Jan. 1, 2015. F/O Mark Rogers, director of ALPA’s dangerous goods program, has long advocated for such a prohibition and did so again at the DGP’s meeting last week in Montréal, Canada.

This action is similar to the U.S. Hazardous Materials Regulations ban on cargo transport of these batteries in 2004 as applies to domestic and foreign passenger-carrying aircraft entering, leaving, or operating in the United States. The U.S. ban came as a result of an NTSB recommendation following an incident involving a shipment of two pallets of lithium batteries at LAX in 1999. After being off-loaded from a passenger flight from Osaka, Japan, one of the pallets was damaged and caught fire, and both burned.

The significance of DGP’s decision is that all types of lithium metal batteries, when shipped individually or outside of equipment, will be prohibited as cargo on all passenger aircraft. Although this decision must be ratified by the ICAO Air Navigation Commission and the ICAO Council, it is expected to be approved in June 2014 and go into effect on Jan. 1, 2015.

This action represents a major step toward increasing safety concerning the shipment of lithium metal batteries worldwide. Importantly, it is also believed that this is just the first step for ICAO in examining the risk posed by shipments of lithium batteries of all types.