Flying with Dionic 90's. What are the current regulations?

[Ramon Engle]

Flying out in the morning. Using Delta Cargo to ship my gear. What are the current restrictions on Dionic 90's? I don't want to carry on a ton of batteries as in the past. Can I check these batteries now?

 

Ramon

[Osvaldo Silvera SOC]

Just flew Delta to Italy last month, carried on 1 HC to power the Monitor I had in my carry on in case they wanted me too, and the other 5 HC's in the case. never a question. Flew MIA to NYC, then to Rome, then to Venice, then back from Trieste to Rome, then to NYC then to MIA, No questions. I did have a full list of gear signed and stamped from US Customs. When I arrived back in the US at JFK, the Customs officers saw the cases, called over another officer who looked bummed he was gonna have to inspect this all, I pulled out the Customs form I had stamed and signed, and they said "WHOOF!, That's awesome, Go ahead", and I walked thru, scary they didn't check every case like I would want them to do, but it was easy enough.

I only took 6 HC's cause I was bringing an Anton Bauer TM4 charger, which charges HC's in 2.5 hours, all 4 at the same time.

Have a great flight/shoot.

Ozzie

[Alan Rencher]

I'm surprised that you got away with that! Lithium ions are heavily restricted. The FAA regulations only allow three batteries, all have to be in carry-on, and one had to be connected to a camera. Batteries over 140wh aren't allowed.

[Evrim KAYA]

last june i flown from New Orleans-Atlanta, Atlanta-Newyork, Newyork-Istanbul back to back with 6 Power Cubes at my carry-on. i got checked several times and nobody gave me any problems.

i think you are allowad to carry limitless amount of batts. if they are under the capacity limit and their connectors are secured with a piece of gaffer tape. that is what the security guy said to me at the Atlanta airport.

[Brian Freesh]

A quick google search clarified.

 

You can carry unlimited spare batteries for "small" lithium ion batteries which are defined as below 8 grams of lithium, or approximately 100 WH. A powercube is 110 WH so it's on the line. But I'd bet the guy at the Atlanta airport was assuming they were small enough, or simply unaware of the "large" lithium ion batteries rule.

 

"large" batteries are defined as having 8-25 grams of lithium or approximately 100-300WH of capacity. So over 140WH is allowed. You are indeed allowed only 2 spare batteries, but that's per carry on, so if you are traveling alone you could get up to 4 (theoretically 5 if you had a camera or device to put one on) or more if it's towards the smaller end and the TSA peeps aren't strict.

 

Dionic 90s should fall in the "small" battery category. In fact, another quick google search turned up the Dionic 90 manual in which Anton Bauer asserts that the Dionic 90 contains less than 8 grams of lithium and is a non-hazardous article for air travel.

[Bryant Swanstrom]

I flew too and from Israel with 6 E-10s and 6 red bricks. They didn't give me any hassle... Except the security guys in Israel said they wanted to keep my batteries for "further security checks" and send them tomorrow on the same flight. I refused and said I would rather stay in the country and wait until they are cleared. 5 minutes later everything was fine.

[Robert Starling SOC]

They even ask now at the Post Office if there are Lithium batteries in the packages.

 

When I had my battery case built, I had it built to hold two 2722 chargers with batteries attached so at least if I got tagged I could get through hopefully with four.

 

I did a multi-state job last year and flew with nine Dionic 90 HCs and no problems with Southwest Cargo.

 

It would suck though to have some jerk take my batteries for a flight.

[Alan Rencher]

http://safetravel.dot.gov/larger_batt.html